People, events and incidents that made the news
Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by admin in Avusa Media News
What a year 2009 has been! It’s not been business as usual for the marketing sectors as budgets were slashed, companies shut down and clients demanded more value for their buck. But we survived and the recession is lifting to reveal a silver lining for those with blue sky thinking and rock hard experience and pragmatism. As we look back, what made the news?
We were awash in Awards but some of the most notable were:
• The inaugural Media Owner Sales Team (MOST) Awards was held to celebrate the top media marketing and sales teams in South Africa, an initiative of Wag the Dog Publishers and the Overall MOST Award went to the team at Avusa Media: Newspapers.
• TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg and Net#work BBDO Johannesburg roared off with two Grand Prix – Outdoor and Radio respectively at the 56th Cannes Lion International Advertising Festival. TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg also won a record number of Cannes Lions for its Trillion Dollar campaign for The Zimbabwean newspaper. This is believed to be the single most awarded campaign coming out of South Africa in Cannes’ 56-year history.
• At the BASA Awards, The Times earned the fiercely contested Media Sponsorship award for its Art Page with other notable awards being Increasing Access to the Arts to First National Bank for the ‘Joburg Art Fair’ and Exclusive Books for ‘Ndodeni Library’
• Above-the-line advertising agency DDB SA won the ANGY trophy as South Africa’s top advertising agency. More than 70 local agencies were asked to vote for what they thought was their best performing agency of the year and DDB came out tops.
High flyer Scandals
It was a year of scandalous revelations as big, not so big and very big names hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Everyone profited – the media, the PR agencies and even the infamous famous who got to sell lots of their belated “I’m telling the truth – now” stories.
Adultery, child molestation charges, gender testing, golden handshakes for the good for nothing and physical abuse sent the guilty scrabbling to the media to tell their side of the story. Joost, Amor, Khanyi, Zola, Jurie, Hestrie, Joelle and Minki among many others loved, lost and lied about their relationships, marriages and sexual peccadilloes to an agog public. The ever enterprising Khanyi Mbau even launched her own website to ensure everyone knows just how famous she is.
Winners, Losers and Scam Artists
Voting gone wrong, rigged voting, competition scams left egg on the face of a number of big brands like Idols and MTN.
When M-Net announced that both Sasha Lee Davids and Jason Hartman were the winners of Idols, both Idols judges and the public disagreed furiously about the decision. About 600 000 SMSs had been delayed during the final round of the competition resulting in Sasha Lee being declared the winner. Lo and behold, one week later and the results showed Jason’s standing increase from 47.23% to a majority of 54%. Sasha-Lee eventually got 46% of the vote. Everyone blamed the mobile network providers!
Network provider MTN’s 15 competition was run to celebrate the company’s 15th birthday. Users were asked to subscribe to the competition at R7,50 an sms. Supposedly persons who sent in the most correct-answer SMSs could win laptops, a car and finally a R1-million house bond. From the beginning it was dogged by controversy. FNB the major partner pulled out because MTN was supposed to have charged R1 per sms. Story after story emerged about many of the winners knowing each other, rigged voting and internal employee corruption. What a fiasco.
The SABC was rocked by scandal…sagas of high level corruption, mismanagement, power hungry board members, blacklisting and financial disaster. A new interim board, umpteen inquiries later, high level suspensions and a R1,6 billion government bailout is supposed to result in a sleek new public broadcaster. Others who got quite sleek as the result of the debacle were hunger striking actors like Sello Maake Ka Ngube!
District 9, the innovative Sci-fi political satire directed by South African born Neil Blomkamp was shot in Chiawelo Soweto and took the world by storm rising to the Top of movies charts in the US taking $37 million in its first week! Not bad for a film produced for $30 million!
Teazers’ advertising is risqué at the best of times but consumers considered the billboard showing a naked woman lying on her back with the payoff line, “No need for Gender testing ” offensive to the extreme. The advertising authority found the billboard mocked the gender controversy involving 800m world champion Caster Semenya.
