In-flight Video for airlines flying into Bangkok

I wasn't involved in the edit (or the scary VO). The ad could easily lose 45". This was a job for the Thai government. I came up with a creative strap line and re-wrote the narrative script. The idea behind the line was that it's not only about your holiday memories, but also how people in the countries you visit remember you. But let's be real. Seeing this on the plane isn't going to sway any child sex offender winging his way to Thailand. What it will do is alert the masses to the fact that this is a real problem in Thailand, and not to turn a blind eye. Bangkok is a trafficking and exploitation hub, especially of children from Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines. And now, the exploitation is filmed and it gets traded and shared on the deep web. There is a great NGO called Ecpat International working to raise awareness of the sexual exploitation of children. One of their campaigns was working with hotel staff to raise awareness eg. If they see a guest bring young children to their rooms, many condoms in the wastebasket, video equipment being carted in. It makes me sick just to think about it, but I guess that's the point. People need to think about it. 

Some Afrikaans Print ads for BMW Motorrad (BMW Motorbikes)

As Creative Director at FCB, I had the opportunity to work on great brands, also in Afrikaans (the second most widely spoken of South Africa's 11 national languages) These online banners and magazine ads are pretty old-school and I don't regard them as conceptually groundbreaking, but they work beautifully in Afrikaans. It's a compelling business argument as well, because Afrikaans speakers account for the largest portion of BMW Motorrad sales in South Africa, especially the GS dual-purpose bike. (GS stands for the German "Gelande Strasse", basically meaning country and town). We took road signs in the South African landscape and married them with well-known Afrikaans songs to push the fact that you can listen to your favorite songs via the blue-tooth kit in your BMW helmet, which speaks to the communication system of the bike. The pay-off line encourages you to "make the road your playlist".

"Jy was beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" by Gert Vlok Nel

"My Stellenbosch se nonnatjie roep my" by Anton Goosen

"Montaguuuuu" deur David Kramer

Apple Sale

Digicape is a Premium Apple Reseller. They briefed us to come up with a concept for a sale. We used this key visual on all sale elements. In Afrikaans, if you buy something "for an apple and an onion", it means you got it at a great price. The retail category is normally devoid of any concept or craft. So this execution won two Silver Pendorings (a South African Afrikaans Ad Show) one in the Original Afrikaans Category and one in the Retail Category. The line translates as: Up to 30% discount on Apple products from 8-30 August.

Creative Strategy: Capitec #AskWhy

This is a case study for Creative Strategy: We got the Capitec Bank account because they regard themselves as a "Retail Bank" and 99c is a retail agency. Capitec Bank are knows for their no-nonsense functionality and low fees. But asides from this, they're non-traditionalists. They ask questions of the South African banking industry. Questions like: "Why do banks think it's ok to close at 3.30pm". And this is where it gets interesting because I bet you didn't know this: South African banks close at 3.30pm so they can start processing all the paper slips and forms you fill in, again and again and again. So at 3.30 they chase you out and they start capturing the data in the back office so their employees can leave at 5pm. Capitec uses a real-time digital system without paperwork. So they're faster and cheaper and stay open longer. Another thing that sets them apart is the interest they offer (a minimum of 4.25% on balance in transaction account - this isn't replicated by any other bank) and their simplicity and transparency. Read more about it in Butch Rice's article

All research pointed to the very obvious: "People hate wasting time banking".
No sh*t. So we believed they are ready to ask some questions: 
"Why do you close your door in my face at 3.30pm?"
"Why do you charge me high banking fees?"
"Why do I have to fill in the same forms over and over?"
"Why do I have to write my name when you can just use a biometric fingerprint reader?"

Because they are always questioning the banking status quo, it was a small step to a strategic positioning to AskWhy of the way we bank. 

It lent itself to very simple, very clear, communication:

If you can't bank after 3.30pm, #AskWhy
If you can't bank on Sunday, #AskWhy
If you don't get interest on the money in your transaction account, #AskWhy.

The creative that was eventually produced isn't worth sharing, so I'm not going to.

But I still think the creative strategy I came up with was solid.

Words for a Shop that sells words

Because I'm a reader, I wrote four long-copy ads about reading. We asked an illustrator to do it on spec, and he crafted this beautiful illustration. Beautiful but impossible to read as a narrative. This idea finally got made by my brave colleagues at Saatchi for their brave client Wordsworth Books and was awarded a Silver Eagle at the Eagles Print Awards in 2011. This is the original copy.

The Special Shelf

All books are different
. One tells you “Hey, I'm Fried Chicken”. So you binge, ignoring bloodshot eyes like the cancer warning on a cigarette pack.
 Another asks for exquisite care. These are the books which change you. And with the last word sealed by back cover, you weigh this wood-thing in your hands, the thoughts still alive inside you
, knowing to keep this one from garage sale, storage or charity shop. This one is for The Special Shelf. And as the book ages, 
the insights once so shockingly new
 mellows in your head, makes friends with your established thoughts.
 When you open it years later
 you find them settled, integrated with the regulars, the characters unpacked. 
And it feels like visiting the house you grew up in. 

Opening a book is like starting a relationship

You enter prepared to invest time, effort, and a certain fidelity. In return you want some kind of enrichment. “Happiness” even?  One of two things happen. 1) Page 50 rolls around and you find yourself estranged by sentences like irritating statements by a partner. You long for other words like other bodies. You give it the old favorite “It's not you, it's me” and you're over and out. But it's ok because at least you gave it your best shot. OR you hit "True Love" or as close to it as you will get. As you become more engaged, with every page it just gets better. Love exists, the chick-flicks were right! With every word the book turns itself to gold right there in your hands. You ask yourself how is it possible you didn't meet before, all those lonely nights you had to endure. And then you say “It doesn't matter because I have you now, like the vow says, to have and to hold.”

A little flash

Sometimes while reading, your attention escapes the page like a canary flying the coop. But you're still fluttering over the words, landing here and there. And then it happens. Pop! Through the eye and into the brain for a delicious synaptic explosion like a chocolate fudge ice-cream headache: A shiny new neural pathway forged in a brain scuffed by television: A combination of words put together just so. You marvel at the fact that you’ve spent 38 years on this earth and consumed a couple of million word combo's. But never this one. THIIIIIISSSS OOOOONE. Nothing less than a sentence-sized revelation. And you are grateful to the creator. And the world is new, for a minute or two. And you carry on, believing there will be more flares in the darkness.

The lender's dilemma

Own a good book and live on a knife edge: You want to force all your friends to read it. You want to clamp their heads in a vice and prop their eyelids open and sneak around with the eye drops and say. "Read that sentence. THAT SENTENCE! BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP!" And then one day, the request hits the fan: “So, that book you're always talking about, I'd love to read it ...” Dot dot freaking dot. You smile, but in your head you're doing a frantic credential check of this scumbag posing as your friend for the past 15 years. Somehow you always knew it would come to this. You shouldn't have snitched. But then you find yourself lying with a scary sincerity. “Someone else has it right now but I'd be happy to lie lie and lie some more.” You find that at some point you committed to these pages bound by glue to protect it from the jam-fingers, spine-benders and smudgers who call themselves family and friends. 

Crash

In Thailand, there are many scooters. There is also much booze. A fatal combination most of the time. We did this ad for the Thai Department of Health and Safety with Palm d'Or winning Bangkok production House "Phenomenon" and Thai director Thanonchai "Tor" Sornsriwichai. In Thai, the word "Chon" literally means "Crash". It's used to describe a car crash, and a way of saying "Cheers" (as in "Crash Glasses").  

Ad for slimmers coffee

A fun spot we conceptualised and shot with director and Thai advertising superhero Thanonchai Sornsriwichai.

Sorry Thailand Public Service Announcement

Unrest had been brewing in Thailand for a long time. From street-marches to public blood-shedding in front of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's house (image belongs to The Telegraph), it all finally came to a head in May 2010 in Bangkok when the government sent in the soldiers to break up a protest by the red-shirted Thaksin supporters, something the government said they wouldn't do. Thaksin himself, high-rolling billionaire politician and prime minister from 2001-2006, one-time Manchester City FC owner and "champion of the poor" was leading his civilian troops remotely from outside Thai borders, where he was hiding out from his sentence by Thai courts for fraud involving billions.

That move set off more than a month of riots in the capital known in the media as the "Battle for Bangkok". Total body count: 85 dead, 2000 injured. (The Thai Army vs the Red shirts was a bit like the Israeli army vs Palestinians, tanks vs bricks and burning tyres, fire crackers and home-made rocket launchers - see the video clip at the bottom)

After it was all over, the Thais were stunned. I remember sitting on public transport while a "Heal the World" type Thai pop song played on the screens inside the train with scenes of the devastation behind the singing pop stars. Every single Thai in the train looked at the screens and all of them looked close to tears. Kinda stupid of me, but only then did I realize what an impact it had on their society. They were absolutely stunned by this thing that almost tore them in two. The fact that it was Thai against Thai made it even worse. What made it even worse is that the Thais are quick to laugh and slow to anger, and violence is directly opposed to their religion of Buddhism.

As all political conflict, this was a lot more complicated than the "bad reds" against the "good yellows".

Our agency got a brief from a government agency to tell the Thai nation that even though things were looking bad, it would get better. The job had to be turned over fast. The process was quite remarkable, it turned into an inter-agency and interdisciplinary brainstorm: There were agency people, the director, a guy with a popular fashion label and many more thinkers.

Some notes on the context of the cultural context of this Public Service Announcement:
"35: The Thai police are notoriously corrupt
"42: as is Thai government
"47: in Bangkok, they are always digging up and repaving pavements. It's people in government awarding lucrative "construction" contracts to their friends etc or for kickbacks.
"48: unfinished public project entitled "Good Hope"
"53: Price-fixing and buying monopolies make the poor farmers poorer and the rich retailers richer.
61": Average Thai mentality is very much "let's have fun and leave running the country to the clever people". Thai media for the people isn't really educating, it's about movie stars and ghosts.
67": Buddhist monks involved in criminal cases
80": the oven coops are for fighting cocks, a favorite working-class pastime.

Even though this PSA was bound up in red tape by the Thai Censorship Board ("inflammatory content" etc), it aired on news programs and became an actuality discussion point in local and international press. On Youtube, the Thai version had over a million hits. People circulated it, and so most people who wanted to see it, could.

The "spirit of reconciliation" in which the ad was made was applauded by the Prime Minister's office, but of course they "could not interfere" with the decision of the Thai Censorship Committee. So in the meantime, this PSA lives on the web.

At Adfest 2011 the effort was rewarded with a Gold Film Lotus and a Lotus "Roots" Award for work in the social category.

In August 2011, Yingluk Shinawatra, leader of political party supported by the red shirts, was elected as Thailand's first female Prime Minister.

CP Sausages

CP products did a joint venture with a "Thailand's Got Talent" type of show called Academy Fantasia, tying in with the sausages "serious but fun" positioning. The song from the ad is the Academy Fantasia theme song. Kinda lame, but kinda funny.

The guy who defined "Thai style", Thanonchai Sornsrivichai from Cannes Grand Prix winning Thai production house Phenomena. Wanna shoot with him some more.

Some work for Jeh United Agency:

For Sylvania, manufacturer of energy-saving lightbulbs, we took a tv ad and ran it in the newspaper.

Although I was Creative Director at The Old Shanghai Firecracker Factory for only 5 months, it was great to be able to do pieces of work I've always said "one day" to.

A very simple piece of self-promotional design for the agency, the design concept was cracked by David Taylor: A water glass that makes you feel good for drinking tap water and not bottled (next time you're in a meeting, count the plastic bottles on the table). We started using this water glass in all agency meetings.

One Show Design Merit 2009.

Every piece of Wood

Food and Trees for Africa (FTFA) needed a fast and inexpensive way to get people to plant more trees of all kinds: Trees to provide more wood, trees to produce oxygen and suck up CO2, trees to bind the soil, prevent water run-off and erosion, trees to sustain habitat, and trees to provide life-giving shade and fruit. I love trees, so I loved doing this ad.

MTN Re-branding

It was great working on the repositioning of SA's Mobile Telephone Network (MTN). From a brand about which everyone said "you going to an agency to work only on MTN?!" to "Wow, you worked on MTN!" But to give credit where it's due, Paul Warner, Founder and ECD was instrumental in pretty much all of it.

MTN Free Ad

Here's another one not for the awards. The brief started cramped: we had money, but very little time to produce an ad for Women's Day. For every handset sold, a percentage went to an NGO called POWA (People Opposing Woman Abuse). Someone found a music video on youtube, we showed it to client and asked them if we did something like that for them for free, would they donate the production budget to the NGO? They said they would. Then we got the media owners to donate the media space, and MTN gave what they would have spent on media to the NGO as well. A guy in the studio played guitar into the laptop, and the rest is Powerpoint history. The advertising community was absolutely livid about the "stolen idea", but we never pretended it was our idea. It was just the best way to give the most money possible to the NGO instead of dumping it into the fat coffers of a production house.

Coca-Cola "Brrr"

Wieden & Kennedy London cracked the beautiful huge positioning "The Coke side of life". We just had to make an ad that plugged in and said "It's refreshing on the Coke side of life". Because we were talking to an area with about a hundred thousand languages, we kept it simple: When you're cold, you go "Brrr". Not a clever idea, but a big one. In a seven hour regional creative meeting, some contingent suggested that in their region, people go "Aah" when they are refreshed. But we stuck to Brrr, and it all kinda worked out, except for a few misplaced "refreshment cues" in the ad (i still don't see what sense the lady with the elephant makes, but maybe I'm just being an idea-Nazi). The ad was recut for many markets, it spread East, the Nigerian dude we cast as the Mayor took his Brrr to the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Five years after we shot it, it's still playing on the train in Bangkok. I'm well sick of it now. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Everyone parodied it. Fun shoot: the props guy made a harness with a swinging weight activated by remote control for that extra shake. If the clip seems somewhat self-congratulatory, it's not. I don't think it's a clever ad, but it sure sold a wagon-load of cold dopes.

Exclusive Books

Call for entries campaign for South African Bookshop Chain "Exclusive Books" annual Short Story Competition. "He tried. Why don't you?" Never won anything (i think they're too long), but they were so much fun to write.

Harley-Davidson Anti-lock Braking "Ronnie's Sex Shop"

Ronnie painted "Ronnie's Shop" on his cottage cos he wanted to open a farm stall. But one night his friends turned Ronnie's Shop into Ronnie's Sex Shop. Ronnie, being cool, left it at that and continued fixing the building for his fruit and vegetables. His friends would stop by for beers and braai some chops (barbecue). Then someone said "Hey Ronnie, why don't you open a bar?" Ronnie thought this was grand, because everyone could start paying for their drinks. And so Ronnie's World Famous Sex Shop For Ice Cold Beer was born, a favorite amongst bikers. The guy on top is Ronnie. The other guy is not Ronnie.

Cannes 2006 Outdoor Bronze

Harley Davidson "Reactions"

Couldn't ask for a nicer brand to work on.

Cannes 2006 Silver for Outdoor Campaign. One Show 2006 Merit.

BMW radio ad

For launch of run-flat tyres on BMW models in South Africa. Cannes 2005 radio shortlist.