Insightful work takes Joe to the top of the Pendoring pile

"As an independent South African agency we could not be happier with our performance at these truly South African advertising awards. It goes a long way to demonstrate that we really are for the South African people, by the South African people," comments Gareth Leck, CEO at Joe Public.

Joe Public's star campaign was the Pendoring 2009 Afskeepveldtog (Neglect Campaign) for which they were awarded three gold and one silver Pendoring. Joe Public was tasked to do the 2009 Pendoring advertising campaign after they were awarded the Prestige Award at the 2008 Pendoring event.

The campaign had both a consumer and an industry leg. For the consumer campaign, the well-known Afrikaans TV newsreader, Riaan Cruywagen, happily obliged to act as a waiter in a steakhouse, while the industry campaign centered on much loved Afrikaans TV characters like Haas Das and Bennie Boekwurm, who in no uncertain terms show what can happen if the language is neglected. There was also a truly Afrikaans advent calendar, hand-made with laslappies by real boerevrouens, calling for participants to do something in Afrikaans every day for thirty days.

The remaining gold was awarded for a kalahari.net campaign which capitalises on their large range of romance novels by presenting romance novel covers with a twist. To highlight the fact that these novels are an escape for many a bored woman, the covers depict the reader's ideal fantasy where she is the heroine in the story - showing how reading a book can truly take you places.

Finally, the two silvers were awarded in the Truly South African category for a television ad for their longstanding client Ocean Basket and a direct mail piece for Joe Public's own CSI initiative Rock4AIDS.

Concludes Leck: "What makes us most proud is that the majority of the awarded pieces were based on true consumer insights, something we strive for in everything we do, be it in Afrikaans, English, Xhosa or Zulu. Because communication that resonates at a deeper level, is worth its weight in gold."