An Afrikaans renaissance

With over a decade's experience in advertising and marketing, Absa group executive: group marketing Happy Ntshingila believes that the advertising campaign demonstrates Absa's contemporary approach to traditional and non-traditional Afrikaans markets. "An established culture and language within our adolescent South African identity, Afrikaans has gone through a major transformation and the creative communicating Absa's KKNK sponsorship needs to reflect this," comments Ntshingila.

The radio commercials incorporate well-known Afrikaans culture, either fairytales, children's programmes or recipes and transforms them into something new and unexpected, using non-conventional voice-overs to communicate something as familiar as Aspoestertjie (Cinderella). The audience is lured into coming to the festival to discover for themselves what contemporary Afrikaans culture looks, feels and sounds like.

Says Greg Roberts, creative director at JWT, "In short, the campaign is about the unexpected. Take what you think about Afrikaans and Afrikaaners and look at it in a whole new light. The stereotypes of yesteryear are no longer applicable. It has once again become cool to speak Afrikaans, to celebrate Afrikaans as an integral part of our history and as a happy, fun component of our identity. The pay-off lines are illustrated by images of established Klein Karoo icons such as the sheep and ostrich, but with a bit of a new millenium remix."

Ntshingila adds, "The outcome of a renaissance cannot be predicted, so we had to be clever in all creative executions, from radio to print, to illustrate the transformed packaging and content of the festival. Absa celebrates this renaissance and hopes the advertising whets the appetites of the public, giving them a foretaste of what is in store at this year's festival."