A uniquely African advertising campaign
by Fred on 20/04/09 at 6:30 am
1 comment
A question that is often asked in marketing circles is: “Where is the great African ad-work?” In other words, many marketers believe there is a dearth of authentically African advertising for Africans, by Africans. Too many campaigns emulate American and European creative work, and is executed by teams more white than the Lions Super 14 rugby squad.
I got sent the campaign below by the team at TBWA, and I’m well impressed about the authentic quality of the work. What do you think?
“Adidas Barbershop Campaign”
On the streets Africa, from Cape Town to Kinshasa, from Lagos to Mombasa, the true measure of fame is having a haircut named after you on a barbershop sign. The streets are full of ‘The Obama’, ‘The Oprah’ and ‘The Denzel.’ This ubiquitous barbershop signage is an African art form or African graphic art with its naïve renderings and pragmatic use of wood, metal and any material that is close at hand.
To celebrate the Confederation’s Cup being played for the first time on African soil, adidas commissioned a series of ‘barbershop’ artworks that honour their galaxy of stars like Gerrard, Messi, Kaka and Pienaar. A ‘cut’ was created for each player according to their skill. So, ‘The Kaka’ is all about dribbling skills while ‘The Gerrard’ is about powerful strikes.
The word Kopanya is a South African word for ‘together’, which effectively makes this artwork an African interpretation of adidas’ global advertising position of “together I am strong.”
Links:
[Thanks Nadja]
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
Tags: advertising, Africa, football, soccer
neo
Apr 21st, 2009
wow i never thought of it that way…theres gr8 potential there, if people were willing to explore it.