It is trite that television and cool air go hand-in-hand with summer like durex and a one night stand. So it is no surprise then that you see adverts for a state of the art air-conditioner range on TV in between the highlites of Graeme's duck(s) and Justin's ton. However what really interested me about the Daikin series of adverts was something else.
The two ads they have shown are both set in a bus. The bus is portrayed as your typical bane of public transport; it is old, cramped, stuffy and friggan hot. The part that the admakers deem 'clever' is when a guy sweating away in the heat is cooled by the sensation of a magazine ad picturing a belter chick in LBD sitting under a Daikin airmachine. The guy then tries to rub his hand up the girls short waist line only to (in ad 1) find his hand on the hairy kilt of a scotsman and (in ad 2) get slapped by a girl resembling the one in the magazine.
Yes they are crap ads and the makers are certainly not going to get the Nandoes or Allan Grey portfolios any time soon. Fair enough sex sells but you have to try relate it to your product surely? Anyway why I waste valuable beach time typing about this is because of how they portrayed the bus...
The opening shots pan through the bus trying to get the point across about how hot it is. They focus on the rows of people, the back of the bus and everyone standing around! What should strike you: less black faces than a 1960 South African sports team.
What are you joking? Not one single person of colour. Now look I also get incensed when black people push the equal opportunities envelope althought rightly so anything should really try and reflect an accurate cross slice of the population but not to depict a black person on public transport is lank unrealistic.
I see Daikin responding in one of two ways: A - it is a foreign ad that they just cut and paste into our market. Or B- they don't see black people as the specific target market for aircontioners.
I am backing them going for the first options because the other is just plain suicide. In which case they are just stupid fucks and too lazy to make a ad that will work on SA television.
Daikin, your silence in responding will be considered an admission of guilt and an acceptence of the mandatory 400 lashes for creating discontent along racial lines, and for taking up valuable 'ryperd' advertising space.
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