Landy ad does it in black and white, but FlySafair should ground its PR firm

IN THIS age of information overload and fast-forward flickering YouTube, a well thought-out still image still has the power to arrest and attract. And, in a marketing context, to get across a message without the proverbial thousand words.

One such simple, elegant, yet effective design shows in the latest Land Rover advert, for Land Roverapproved vehicles.

To qualify as an approved vehicle, each Landy must go through a stringent 144-point test. To show that, and to emphasise the brand’s ability to take you far along the road less travelled, the ad designers have a myriad ticks disappearing into the distant and over the horizon with a Freelander in the middle.

The design is largely black and white and reminds us that, used cleverly, it can be even more effective than a shouty colour. An Orchid for Land Rover. Late last year, I handed out an angry Onion to a Joburg PR firm, PR Worx, which has the FlySafair account, among others.

Among the assorted bits of incompetence (too many to go into now), they have been sending out individual e- mails to people with the wrong names on them.

Hence, I am, in addition to being Brendan, also known to them as Muzi and as Herbert. Quite why Muzi and Herbert should have the same e-mail address as me – which is a form of my name – is clearly something which has not occurred to them.

Despite this being pointed out to them – and an indication that they do not understand e-mail and that, possibly they are annoying plenty of other journalists with incorrect addresses –