by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) PPC Ltd has come up with a new promotion that radically reinvents the more-than-100-years-old cement brand.
Pretoria Portland Cement Company Ltd, or PPC as it is known, has decided that it needs to get people to think differently about its product. It is doing this by asking artists and designers to be creative with cement and concrete — and to use the material in a number of artistic ways, from sculpture and architecture to fashion and jewellery.
Instead of focusing on concrete’s core property — its structural strength, that makes it well suited for large buildings, dams, power stations and bridges — PPC has been asking young South African artists to consider concrete as a source of inspiration for their art.
For this campaign, the cement manufacturer has created the PPC Imaginarium Awards, an initiative that revolves around an annual competition that offers up generous prizes for innovative uses of concrete.
- View all the Ads of the Week at a glance on our #AdoftheWeek Pinterest board!
This year, the prize-giving ceremony coincided with Design Indaba in Cape Town, which provided a showcase for the finalists’ and winners’ creations.
The overall winners were two industrial designers, Martin Bolton and Craig Tyndall, who designed and built an audio speaker made from a combination of concrete, leather and acrylic. The two shared the grand prize of R100 000, and the winners in each category earned R50 000 each, with prizes of R15 000 being awarded to the runners-up.
But it’s not just about the money. Each category winner also has the opportunity to be mentored by an established artist in that field. Workshops and exhibition opportunities are also offered annually, as well as promotion of the artist through the media and online. PPC claims, through this project, to be “one of the biggest supporters of the Arts fraternity in our country”.
PPC has been in business for 123 years, and currently manufactures 8 million tons of cement products a year. Already operating in Botswana and Zambia, it is currently expanding into Algeria, DRC, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
The dedicated site for PPC Imaginarium, www.ppcimaginarium.co.za, is well-designed and stylish, with clear photographs and inspirational stories from the winners and some of the mentors.
That’s the reason this week that, instead awarding “Ad of the Week” to an advert, I’m celebrating a campaign that has a positive influence in society while simultaneously improving the image of the brand in a way that is unexpected and innovative.
What better way to do this than with a place and a space that’s devoted to the imagination? An imaginarium that stimulates the best part of what it means to be alive, to think, to create and to be an artist.
I, for one, will never look at cement in quite the same way again!
Ad of the Week, published on MarkLives every Wednesday, is penned by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki), the CEO of Ornico, a Brand Intelligence® firm that focuses on media, reputation and brand research.
If you are involved in making advertising
that is smart, funny and/or engaging,
please let Oresti know about it at info@ornicogroup.co.za.
— MarkLives’ round-up of top ad and media industry news and opinion in your mailbox every Monday and Thursday. Sign up here!