`ZAMBUK. My grandmother used to put that on everything,” a friend said to me when I told her about a new TV campaign for the balm. Let’s face it, most adverts for an affordable green medicated ointment show a mother tending to her kid – not black and white images of some sexy naked woman in handcuffs, or a man who’s just got a nipple ring. They show happy households, not some freshly shaven, beautiful black teenager, or a girl with a new tattoo and background noise provided by industrial band Battery 9.
Produced by the DDB agency under the creative direction of Bryan Cawood, the new Zambuk ads aim to use aspects of youth culture to sell a traditional old-school product. Cawood says that focus groups – black kids aged 16 to 24 – showed that they trusted the brand but that it was hardly regarded as something cool.
Local advertising, says Cawood, is conservative and full of stereotypes as to what will appeal to emerging black consumers: “They’re not setting the pace, they’re following.” DDB wanted to get beyond the idea that to grab the attention of this market you dish out images of graffiti and basketball against a rap music background.
Sipho Matsheke, strategic director at new black-run agency Azaguys, says the United States hype thing is used so much because “it’s easier – it’s tried and tested”.
Matsheke and Herdbuoys creative director Jonathan Swanepoel agree that the ad industry is dominated by people who don’t have in-depth knowledge of the black youth market: which results in them endorsing a US culture. Matsheke stresses that whatever colour you are, advertising entails being in touch with the audience. Sitting at a desk and hoping that reading Bona will give some kind of understanding, will not do.
Swanepoel believes part of the problem is that advertising schools in South Africa are relatively new; that advertising is not yet a career to which many aspire, and black pupils are scarce in the schools.
Herdbuoys handles the Sprite and Radio Metro campaigns. Both will target youth.
But, as part of the audience they want, their new Metro ad leaves me wondering what exactly they are trying to do: there’s a picture of a woman model in a fluffy rave gear-inspired outfit. Swanepoel says it was “meant to be somewhere between the rap and R’n’B look.” It does not succeed.
But, he adds, the image of the woman surely speaks more to the Metro audience than the pissing cupids one agency had as part of Metro’s last campaign.
The Zambuk ads don’t follow any stereotypes, but they remind me a lot of a Calvin Klein CK1 ad, and could have come from anywhere in the world. Cawood answers by saying that DDB were possibly inspired by CK1 stylistically as well as by the attitude of the ad. He does not believe that they ripped it off.
He believes South African ads lack attitude. Instead of discovering that the target audience likes rap and then attaching rap to a fizzy drink, agencies should rather find out why people are into rap – and the attitude behind that.
“Youth want to see stuff that’s more believable, because they can see bullshit a mile away,” says Swanepoel.
A la Calvin Klein, the Zambuk ad wants to
look like it used people off the streets (hey, they’re just like you and me, we’re just impossibly beautiful and trendy): “Where we’d want to be ending up is using real young people with a killer dress sense who listen to Metro and drink Sprite.”
Swanepoel adds: “In the past, youth wasn’t seen as an important market, but now 50% of the population is under 30 – and they have a hell of a lot of spending power.”