by DK Badenhorst. South African news often captures the spirit of sports: focused, driven and defiant.
Malema’s “we’re playing in the big league” and “taking on the big boys” sounds more-sports orientated than adidas’s “all in” or Nike’s “just do it”. Under Armour’s “I will what I want” could headline so many news articles, and we can imagine Puma’s Forever Faster rebellion striking a particularly relevant chord among our youth.
Capturing the sentiment
It would seem that the revolutionary mantras of sporting brands can capture the sentiment of modern-day South Africa.
It’s the language of immediate success, of being a handful and of making things ungovernable. It’s the desire to be formidable, to strike fear into the enemy’s heart – all the while reinforcing a zero-sum attitude: my gain is another’s loss. Or, as the narrative to the masses goes, another’s gain is your loss.
Did we at some point forget to turn the Revolution Machine off after we finally got our democracy or is there something deeper at work?
Language of good governance
In order to map out the bigger picture, it’s always a good idea to look for your message in more than one place. Does a less-revolutionary narrative exist in SA? Would we even know it if we saw it?
I’ve always believed that governments should sound like financial institutions. Investec’s “putting our energy into what matters” should be the sort of thing government says. “Entrepreneurship is working for me” is another gem from the Investec stable that would intuitively put an economy on track.
Putting efforts into building a sustainable economy, a better future and a more-educated citizenry should be the focus of government. But, instead, our government is so often involved in questions of revolution – the sports narrative – that it leaves the important issues in the hands of the financial institutions which, through the relentless grinding of the market’s gears, have learned that we can only cash out long after we’ve invested.
Why are they hiding this language?
But, if this language is doing the rounds in SA, why has government not picked up on it? Why does this tone of voice not decorate our lampposts before elections? Why are these sober and long-term orientated discussions not leading our nation?
I believe the answer lies not in a sinister Machiavellian government plot, but rather in the attitude of the SA citizen. In simply looking at SA advertising, we (as a nation) come across as a nation in its early teens (which should be no surprise, given the age of democratic SA). The long-term narrative is not being hidden – we’re just not listening to it.
I’ve not been a teenager for a while but, from what I recall, it wasn’t a life stage where I spent late nights discussing the ins and outs of investing. It wasn’t something that I cared about.
Never more appealing
If someone were putting all his or her energy into what matters, it was probably good but that statement didn’t grab my attention. No matter what a bank said, it was never more appealing than the latest Nike ad or the new Red Bull Rampage.
Immediate satisfaction is important when an image takes priority over what tomorrow may bring.
An extreme cultural phenomenon is Izikhothane, where we see an almost theoretical answer to the question, “What if tomorrow mattered absolutely nothing and ego was everything?”
Resonates on an everyday level
But is it not maybe unfair to say that, because we like the rhetoric of sports ads more than the chin-stroking one-liners from Investec, we are now suddenly teens? Possibly. But consider some other pieces of SA financial communication.
By looking at where communication from the financial category (a very serious and grownup category) resonates with people on an everyday level, we are able to reinforce this theory and understand how brands can help.
There are many emotional financial ads (Allan Gray, Coronation) that play in the emotional space of long-term relationships and the beauty of dedication. But they fail to address the reality of money.
Doesn’t really help us
When we watch the ad, we feel the happiness of long-term thinking, but then it doesn’t really help us with our next step in life. What do I do now?
SA’s problem is not that we don’t feel good about long-term investing. It’s that SA does not understand money and how to spend it. The average South African simply has no money left to invest at the end of the month. Like teens, we throw caution to the wind and blindly swipe the other card.
As an industry, we as marketers have educated people far better on the benefits of spending than we did on the prudence of saving. So how do money matters resonate in SA?
Make the complicated simple
The tradition of analogies is as old as the mountains. When we start a sentence with ‘it’s like’, we are using this technique that borrows from a familiar concept in order to teach a new one. Checkers employs this workhorse in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way in order to make inflation less scary and to position itself as someone who has already taken care of it.
Under closer scrutiny the actual analogy will fall apart – inflation, as a mechanism, is far more complicated and arguably necessary. But that isn’t the point here.
This piece of communication should serve as a popup book that lays down the foundation of what inflation does (rather than what it is). It’s something to put a worrying teen’s mind at ease while inadvertently giving her or him a new way of thinking about something old.
In theory, we now have a stepping stone to a more-complicated model of inflation, which ultimately leads to a more-educated, mature and responsible nation (lofty, but I am thinking long-term).
Make money less abstract
His salary was paid to him in one rand coins, his cards were tucked away in his safe, the key handed to his brother, and he had to make it through a full month with nothing more than his salary in one rand coins.
It reminds us of being teenagers. That time in life where you got paid in cash, financial planning was an exercise rather than a necessity and when bankcards and overdrafts looked like more trouble than they are worth.
Stack a bit too high
We can see the One Rand Man’s money. The lunchboxes of money that pays for his car suddenly stack a bit too high, especially if we compare them to the few lunchboxes he has left to live off (let alone invest).
And, yet, how many South Africans are exactly the same? In looking at borrowing at the end of the month, it feels like a good idea, until we see the little stack that becomes interest – the cost of borrowing.
It would seem that our financial institutions (and our access to credit, in particular) is a bit more advanced than our financial intuition.
So what?
Neither Checkers nor Sanlam is being insincere with their communication. These pieces are not patronising attitudes from big companies towards their consumers.
On the one hand, Checkers has been talking about its efforts to combat inflation for as long as I can remember and, even with a degree in economics, I have to look at the radio for a second in order to convert the message into an emotion before I can nod and say, “That’s great stuff.” It takes simplification to hammer the message home.
Sanlam, on the other hand, has been preaching sound financial investments since it opened its doors. It’s the lifeblood of the organisation.
It is also not alone in this and yet South Africans are notoriously bad with money. Money is an abstraction, and spending is a shortcut to dignity and self-respect (think again of Izikhothane). It takes a man spending pieces of silver on foot to make us understand the value of money.
Advertising is a mirror
We live in an age of democratised publishing, where web hits are counted and where views become votes. Our media is becoming an increasingly accurate reflection of who we are and, in SA, we do indeed come across as young – teens, to be more precise.
Like teenagers, we are quick to anger, we love rebellion and we believe in the zero-sum game. We also want what we want and we want it now. But, on the more boring side of life, we need older brands to tell us how to save, to explain to us what money really is and to create analogies to add depth and dimension to tricky concepts.
Sports brands should be edgy and rebellious. What a dreary world would it not be if Under Armor ‘willed what I ought to will’? Or if Nike broke the electric atmosphere, moments before kickoff, with ‘just reconsider it’?
Suspending reality
On the sports field, there is no long term. The rules of the game resemble an oversimplified model of the world, fair is black and white and, when things get tricky, we can always just look at the ref. In sports, we’ve created a sandbox where we suspend reality and live for the moment.
But the brands that shape our day-to-day lives (FMCG, retail, finance etc) walk our everyday lives with us. Their advertising talks to the things that will have repercussions in real life, over a longer period of time, and decisions that often affect the people we care about.
It’s a tricky space for edgy ads but these brands are in a great position to not only improve the product or category experience, but also to educate us and improve the overall quality of life.
Understanding leads to opportunity
Yes, we are a young nation and youngsters are risk-takers – that is the power and beauty of youth. But understanding that we’re a restless bunch opens up an opportunity for our wiser, more sober brands to step in to guide us through the rapids and bring us to the further shore.
DK Badenhorst is a cultural insight and semiotics consultant who brings cultural context and long-term trend insights to brand communication. He will contribute the monthly “Brand Culture” column, exploring the value and meaning interaction between brands and society, to MarkLives.com.
— MarkLives’ round-up of top ad and media industry news and opinion in your mailbox every three work days. Sign up here!