For a sports-mad nation, our advertising industry tells remarkably few of the stories of arguably our country’s biggest celebrities – our sports stars.
To see how influential our sporting heroes are, just look at Twitter. According to BlackSmoke research released towards the end of last year, Proteas cricket captain AB De Villiers was the most followed South African celebrity on Twitter, while six of the top ten men were cricketers. Since then, Trevor Noah may have overtaken him thanks to hosting The Daily Show, but AB now has 3.7 million followers – a million more in less than a year.
Some of South Africa’s most memorable advertising campaigns have harnessed the power of sport, from the Be The Coach campaign surrounding Ogilvy’s multi-award-winning Carling Black Label Cup to Arcade co-founder Lebogang Rasethaba’s recent #operation45 campaign with Y&R for Operation Smile, which highlighted that it only takes 45 minutes to perform a cleft lip correction surgery – the same amount of time as half a game of soccer.
But these campaigns are the exceptions that prove the rule: sport gets surprisingly little game-time in local advertising.
About this time last year, just before the Rugby World Cup began, I remember watching a brand film about how Ashwin Willemse had been born into a gang but grown into a Springbok.
The campaign was for Guinness Europe, conceptualised by London agency AMV BBDO and directed by Stink’s John Hillcoat, an Australian.
Ashwin Willemse was Player of the Season way back in 2003, so I wondered why South African creatives had slept on this story for more than a decade before allowing it to be repackaged for an international market by international creatives.
Fast-forward a year, and I was delighted when Nike approached Arcade Content to make a tribute to Caster Semenya ahead of her Olympic final.
The idea for the film came from a long journey between Nike South Africa, their agency Design Futura and Lebo, who played a key role in developing the delicate tonal and conceptual foundation of the piece. From there, director Kyle Lewis entered the mix to bring his stylistic and emotional sensibilities to the film, resulting in something Arcade is deeply proud of – a tribute to Caster that clocked more than 500 000 views in the space of a weekend, with Caster herself being proud enough to share it on her social media.
The piece salutes Caster’s will to succeed even as her legitimacy as a female athlete has been continually contested on the grounds of society’s deep-seated fear of that which is different. Caster’s courage and determination is celebrated through a montage of powerful portraits of teenage girls staring into camera while a voiceover delivers a message about society’s tendency to hold female athletes back instead of allowing them to flourish.
Caster went on to win her race, taking a gold medal home to her country, while the film’s powerful message sparked a torrent of pride and enthusiasm across both South African and international social media platforms.
It was the kind of goodwill money can’t buy, leveraged by a forward-thinking agency with a brave client prepared to back a local star before she won her medal, not after.
At Arcade, we’ve specialised in this kind of influence marketing – in authentically matching a brand message with an influencers’ existing voice, using directors who understand the nuances of what that influencer represents. Lebo’s double Loerie-winning Castle Lite Ziyabanda campaign for Ogilvy with Stilo Magolide and Sibot is a good example, as is Mr Madumane, Kyle Lewis’ recent music video for Cassper Nyovest, which formed part of King James’ National Saving’s Month campaign for Sanlam.
Working with sports stars is a natural extension of our work with musicians and other celebrities, and is something we’re looking forwards to doing more of. The Olympics were a reminder that South Africa not only has some of the world’s best athletes, but that they have some of the most remarkable stories too.
Anna “Tannie Ans” Botha, a 74-year-old great-grandmother, coached Wayde van Niekerk to the 400m world record.
Just before the Olympics, Sunette Viljoen spoke out about the physical abuse she endured from her family for being a lesbian, but stayed focused and won a Silver medal for javelin, dedicating her Olympic year to “everyone who is being broken emotionally or physically over who they love.”
These are the kind of powerful, real life stories we want to be telling, stories of inspirational South Africans who make us want to be better, matched with brands which share the values they represent.
Six months ago, Telkom brought out a popular ad, using 100 and 200m world record holder Usain Bolt to promote their new ‘Boltspeed’ fibre broadband. It was an understandable choice, but imagine if they’d used Wayde van Niekerk instead? Imagine how much free mileage that ad would have had after he smashed the 400m world record from lane eight, how much goodwill it would have generated?
Let’s all aim to be faster out the blocks from here on. Because if we don’t tell our sports stars’ stories quickly enough, you can be sure our international competitors will.
By Colin Howard, co-founder and managing director, Arcade Content
