#Orchids&Onions | KFC's family and food gets it right, but Afrisam bombs out
If you’ve got to shift widgets, then you need some call-to-action material and executions, as well as pitches which shamelessly focus on money.
To do otherwise means risking the wrath of the bean-counters who will want to tut-tut about the ROI.
It takes a brave brand – or one which is so established that it is comfortable in its own skin – to move off into the world of emotional storytelling… especially when the story being told is more suited to a family soap opera than a commercial pitch.
The Orchid: Connection between family and food
And, while KFC has done plenty of emotional ads in the past – when the connection between people, family and food has been emphasised – its latest pushes the storytelling boundaries a little further.
Those boundaries take the viewer outside the “conventional” nuclear family of a still-married Mom and Dad and two offspring.
This time, the family is clearly not all in one happy space. There’s a new father figure lying next to Mom, joking in the kitchen and showing up to sports practices.
We never find out what happened to the man replaced – but clearly, the son in the family misses his Dad. So much so, that there’s open disdain and borderline hostility between the two. The generational divide is exacerbated by the new family vibe.
And there is nothing much the new Dad can do about it, try as he might.
Not easy to watch
It’s not easy to watch parts of the ad, because you’re only too aware that divorce and split homes – and absent fathers – are the reality for a large number of South African families.
This ad, too, is different to others of the genre, where the son reconciles eventually with his flesh-and-blood father. This meeting of the two is going to take something more.
And that something appears in the shape of the son’s new girlfriend – and you can feel the shy awe of first love as he brings her home. Dad breaks the ice by inviting her in – to share the family’s KFC Streetwise family meal.
United by food
United by food is not something unique in marketing executions, but this one has been done so tastefully that it crosses over into entertainment – and emotional entertainment at that.
Even though the Streetwise Family meal only appears at the end, it’s impossible to miss, and the message gets across.
It’s also a reminder that we can still produce great, entertaining ads in South Africa... risky or not.
Orchids to KFC, Ogilvy South Africa and Darling Films.
The Onion: Rather predictable
Now that the rugby is back on again – as a year-round spectacle, effectively – sponsors are making sure their investment rands are working.
Sometimes, the sponsors of our national Springbok team can be a good fit – especially those related to actual athletic achievements – but sometimes, it’s awkward.
Especially so is the rather predictable ad for Afrisam Cement, which is, I suppose, the official concrete supplier to the Boks.
All of the cliches have been rounded up and deployed, like the “Bomb Squad”, in service of the brand.
So, we see Bok rough, tough and hard-to-bluff forwards (and, as a one-time rugby flanker years ago, I state as a fact that forwards are the real, tough, deal) pushing a chunk of concrete.
Words like “set” (geddit?) ebb and flow around the dull sentences, ending in the assertion that Afrisam is “backing champions, building legacies”.
Yawn.
I don’t know if that would keep the brand top of mind for me if I popped into Builders Warehouse one day in search of something to make a path with.
It’s dull, so it gets an Onion.
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