Fresh Afrikaans advertising breeze: Pendoring Prestige Award winner impresses with catchy creations

This is how Nico Botha (copywriter) and Renier Zandberg (art director) of Ogilvy Johannesburg, who walked away with the Pendoring Prestige Award for the fun and fresh Exclusive Books campaign, describe themselves. Together they want to achieve even more in the world of advertising.

"Afrikaans is our mother tongue and we are very proud of the language. Alas, in our industry we have very few opportunities to conceptualise and create original Afrikaans campaigns as most work is created in English. So when we got the opportunity, it was absolute bliss to come up with something proudly Afrikaans. We have a great passion for Afrikaans and advertising, so it was an absolute delight to be able to combine both in a good campaign," says Botha.

Each year Exclusive Books has a 'Lekkerleesfees' (enjoyable reading festival) during which Afrikaans literature is on promotion for a month, he adds."Our campaign was for this promotion. It was intended to whet people's appetite for Afrikaans and to satisfy this hunger with Afrikaans books at Exclusive Books. Hence the creation of the campaign slogan, Voer jou lus vir Die Taal (Satisfy your appetite for The Language).

How do you make the consumer's mouth water for Afrikaans?

Copywriter Nico Botha (right) and art director Renier Zandberg (middle), receive their gold Pendoring award in the category Original Afrikaans from Japie Gouws, chairman of the Pendoring Board, for their fun and fresh Exclusive Books campaign. This campaign also landed them the sought-after Pendoring Prestige Award which includes an overseas study trip.

"We all know that you can play around with Afrikaans and we wanted to do it with the advertisements in this campaign. When you listen to the way people speak Afrikaans nowadays, you notice that often many words are no longer being used in Afrikaans, or even that no Afrikaans words exist for certain objects. We identified some of these and created brand new, orginal Afrikaans words for them," explains Botha.

"And because Afrikaans is so 'playful', we thought long and hard to come up with really catchy words. At the same time, when hearing these words, people must immediately realise what we're talking about. It must be something with which they can identify, for example if you hear the name spytjy'tgekyk-driehoek-baaibroek, you immediately know it is something people don't really want to see on the beach," he argues.

The same applies to the advertisement Kanniehorie-kakofonie-klapsoekpyp. "In a year where at least one vuvuzela blasted loudly in everybody's ears, we thought it would be an ideal addition to the campaign since all will know what we're talking about. The reaction to a booming vuvuzela is usually one of fright, followed by aggression, so we wanted to create a word that expresses that. In fact, this was our approach to every word in the campaign."

According to Botha, Exclusive Books, which thanks to the Pendoring Prestige Award will receive free airtime/advertising space to the value of R2,5 million from a number of Pendoring partners, has a substantial client base, therefore it makes sense to devote at least one month a year to Afrikaans literature.

"It's great to work with a client who realises that Afrikaans speaking people appreciate being spoken to in their mother tongue, but it's also refreshing that they were prepared to expose the campaign to the public. The client could easily have opted for a more sales driven campaign, but was prepared to have some fun," says Botha.

Zandberg studied graphic design at Northwest University in Potchefstroom, where he developed a passion for design and communication. He has been working as art director at Ogilvy Johannesburg since the beginning of 2008. He's keen to make his mark in the industry and eventually wants to open his own design and advertising agency.

After studying in Stellenbosch, Botha followed a copywriting course at the Red & Yellow advertising school in Cape Town. He's been working at Ogilvy Johannesburg since 2006 and enjoys every moment of it. He would like to see more of the world and to use advertising as a means to this end. And like Zandberg, he would dearly like to start his own agency one day.

"We want to excel as a team and achieve much more together," Botha and Zandberg enthuse. "We want to create campaigns that people will love and cherish and remember. We operate as a unit and complement each other well. Almost like Oros and water," says Botha.

"We would also like to undertake the Pendoring study tour together. New York is a huge draw card with many internationally renowned agencies like Droga5 and Wieden & Kennedy. However, there are many, many other agencies in the world and at this stage we are keeping our options open," they conclude.