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.