A community organisation has lodged a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority against South African Breweries (SAB) for what it calls ”disrespectful advertising in poor taste”.
Soweto’s June 16 Roots Festival organising committee has issued a statement calling SAB’s Youth Day-oriented Pay Your Respects campaign ”a blatant abuse of drunken profits and an insult to our history”.
In the commercial currently being aired on national TV, a young man pours a libation of beer on to the ground from a Castle Lager bottle. A statement from Ogilvy Cape Town, which made the commercial, notes that the advertisement was inspired by MTV, where musicians pour liquor on to the ground ”in remembrance of their dead homies”.
The commercial also originates from a tradition in which ”umqombothi [traditonal beer] is spilled on the ground before ukhamba [calabash] is passed around”, the agency says.
The June 16 Roots Festival holds an annual Youth Day commemoration in Mofolo Park, Soweto, intended for youth under 16. The event, which showcases the talents of children, is promoted as an alcohol-free event.
Project manager Tefo Mohale, said: ”It was SAB-stocked bottle stores that were one of the main targets of public anger in the 1976 uprising.”
Matthew Riley, account manager of Ogilvy Cape Town, claims that the campaign is ”not a brand commercial for Castle Lager”, but aims to inspire people to leave messages of respect on a specially constructed website. To date almost 200 message have appeared.
But Mohale says he and his comrades are concerned about the ”nonsensical ways in which the community chooses to commemorate important days”. He refers particularly to June 16 theme parties at which people don school uniforms and get inebriated.
SAB communications manager Michael Farr said the company would defend its campaign, which was ”brought to us by a black creative director in one of our agencies.
”All this ad seeks to do is for people to reflect upon … those who lost their lives in the June 16 1976 riots. From our research we found out that pouring alcohol [on to the ground] is a traditional way of honouring one’s ancestors. This is simply a matter of SAB remembering what happened. We don’t think there is anything vaguely disrespectful.”