Cell C says, “We’ve got you covered.” True, says an irritated Richtersveld community — but only if you’re standing on tiptoe.
The tiny Richtersveld community of Kuboes complains bitterly that while a Cell C advertisement uses footage of their town to vaunt its extensive geographical coverage, their community has to make do with poor reception from the cellphone operator.
“You get some Cell C coverage, but it isn’t that good. The people have to stand on the tips of their toes to get it,” said Dominee Hendriks, who runs the local church.
Hendriks says the film crew failed to ask permission to shoot on church grounds or from the parents of the children featured in the footage. The first time the community found out about the ad was when they saw it on television.
“We thought, hey, but that is our church; we were dumbstruck!” said Hendriks, who lives on the church grounds. “No one in the community saw them.”
The Cell C ad, which shows young people on a road trip in South Africa and uses the tag line “we’ve got you covered”, features footage of young children from Kuboes playing soccer outside the town’s church.
Terraplane, the production company that shot the footage, said it spoke to a local priest who was on the church property when the crew arrived, and that he okayed the shoot.
Terraplane’s owner, Anne Roberts, added that the company paid cash to all the children featured in the footage playing soccer.
“This has nothing to do with Cell C,” said Roberts. “If the community has a problem, they must come to us.”
“I don’t know if the community thinks there is a bunch of cash to get out of this. It smacks a little bit of that.”
Hendriks said he had written an e-mail on the commmunity’s behalf to Cell C, complaining that no permission had been sought to film on church grounds and to express residents’ unhappiness.
“I said we expect some form of compensation for the use of our community, the church and its grounds. They wrote back an e-mail saying thanks for the interest, but no donations can be given at this stage by Cell C. They totally missed the point.”