Orchids, Onions and … peaches?

SANTAM has been running an eye-catching print campaign recently which taps into our deep primeval beliefs that bad things happen more on some days than others.

So, for every day of the week – from Mondays to Fridays – Santam put together a disaster for the day, asking whether we, the readers, knew that most plumbing disasters happen on Mondays, or that most car hijackings and thefts happen on Tuesdays.

It’s probably all flim-flam, but it does emphasise that misfortune can happen on any day on the week – and in any number of different forms.

It’s a clever reminder to check whether the insurance is up- to- date, lest you turn an inconvenience into a tragedy. Orchids to Santam. I also like the VW Tiguan ad, which is currently running… although I understand it is not a new one. It shows a couple awaking in a bed at a country hotel, then hastily getting dressed, packing, grabbing breakfast on the run from the dining room (to disapproving looks from the maitre d’) and then fleeing to their Tiguan.

You see them roaring along dirt roads and finally, after parking the car, they hurdle a fence and dash across a field… and sneak into the back of a tent, only to emerge immediately on the other side and greet their campmate as though they have just got up after sleeping rough all night.

The punchline: Tiguan – explore, comfortably – perfectly sums up the appeal of the VW SUV which can take you to adventurous places, but in the comfort you’re accustomed to.

I could not find a copy of our local version of the ad on the internet, although it is clear it has been used in European and American markets, with a slightly different tag line. The ad is clearly South African, so it would have had to have been done by Ogilvy Cape Town, VW’s long-standing ad agency.

It’s another typical, uniquely South African VW ad, and gets Orchids all round.

A rubbishy foreign ad which irritates me is the one for Lifebuoy (filled with lots of clean, sophisticated white people) which purports to show how the disease prevention systems of trees are similar to that of Lifebuoy. Garbage! Mind you, putting tree sap all over yourself would probably be better than the pong of Lifebouy. Onions for you, Lifebouy.

Another ad in similar vein which gets an Onion from me and my daughter, who gets almost incandescent with rage when she sees it (wonder where she got that from?), is the one for Dove beauty soap, which shows two women looking after a peach for a week – one which has been coated with Dove and the other left natural.

Of course, the uncovered natural one is all withered after a week whereas the one smeared with Dove is, guess what?… peachy smooth.

More garbage. As if Dove would do this and as if peaches are anything like human skin in real life.

Do we look like we’re morons, Dove? Onion (non-coated) for you.

Finally, this is neither Orchid nor Onion but just another observation from our uniquely South African “you can’t make up this stuff ” bucket of treasures.

There was an advertising supplement in the most recent Mail & Guardian commemorating the 20th anniversary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). Apart from the usual thoughts from the union president, there were a number of virulent attacks on the whole edifice of capitalism by the union’s general secretary, the firebrand Irvin Jim.

At one point he ranted on about how governments around the world had done in the workers by putting in money to support the rapacious banks. Fair enough… your opinion.

But, I ask with tears of mirth in my eyes, where else in the world would you find this accompanied by a half-page, full-colour ad for a bank?

FNB offers services to the Numsa’s struggling workers (and a few peasants like me) – but I can’t help but wonder what Steve would say.