Cherryflava

The Best South African television ads…ever.

Posted on 20. Jun, 2007 by Jonathan Cherry in Advertising

We had a minute or two to catch up on some long overdue magazine reading – and studied with some intent the latest Financial Mail Adfocus supplement.

Alistair King from King James, lists his top 20 South African ads of all time. Here are a few that caught our eye:

Number 1: BMW ‘Mouse’ – a true 80′s Hunt Lascaris / Keith Rose classic. Marketers are to this day still briefing in jobs to their agencies with the instruction that they want a BMW ‘Mouse’ ad. A no-brainer for top spot.

Number 3: Fiat Palio: ‘Bicycle’ – the movie theatre favourite. Long after it’s TV media stint, the agency was still running this at movie screenings much to public entertainment value. Comedy won the placing here, but worked well for Fiat on a brand level too.

Number 7: BMW ‘Landspeed’ – Although with production budgets as big as those throw at TBWA in it’s hayday it was hard for them not to make a cracking commercial for a car brand – we however grew quiet attached to this spoof version done by Oglivy for VW Polo.

BTW – it’s interesting to note, that out of the 20 top ads Mr. King chose – 11 of them were for vehicle related brands. 
Now, that could be because back in the day, those were the guys with the big bucks – or the directors were just more motivated to shoot car stuff, rather than baby powder ads.
Another observation, is that Keith Rose directed 6 of the top 20 ads, making him the most successful SA director.

Obviously the selection is going to be highly subjective and most of ads on the list are from way back when production budgets where supported with a blank cheque. But we enjoyed the flight through SA marketing history.

We would’ve, however, slipped this one in just for good measure .