by Sabrina Forbes. Montse de Rojas and her global team are working to turn BOS into the single brand most closely associated with rooibos.
Tag archives: bos ice tea
Tuned: Authenticity the ‘BOS’
by Thabang Leshilo (@Thabang_Leshilo) South Africa’s emerging middle market is being short-changed by the mass-produced, ubiquitous global brands, and it should look to brands that espouse authenticity for greater satisfaction. Hands down, a Corona and pair of Havaianas are far more — well, far more. And local brands can deliver the ‘gees’, too.
Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios – the Robot with a Taste for Tea
Back in the ancient history of the internet (we’re talking 1982 here), four students at Carnegie Mellon University designed the first ‘internet appliance’ – an internet-accessible vending machine. The story goes that these computer science students were working quite far from the departmental cold-drink vending machine, and would have to deal with frustration and disappointment when, having made the trek across the campus to get a cold beverage, they would find either an empty machine or one that was filled with warm drinks.
So the people others would say were ‘geeks’, but whom I’d call pure genius, got together and hacked a solution. They installed sensors in the vending machine that interfaced with their departmental mainframe, a DEC PDP-10. From then on, these four students could be anywhere in the world and by merely using a program called Finger they could to get the vending machine to tell them exactly how many drinks were available, and how cold they were. To appreciate the marvel of this, we’re talking a time when most people had faxes.
The very first internet-accessible vending machine spawned many successors, making it—in effect—the first ‘internet meme’: vending machines in campuses across America, coffee pots being watched by webcams, a toilet being watched by a webcam (a gag – this was just a single pic, so nobody’s privacy was invaded) . Oh, the fun that was had in the days of the Arpanet (aka the pre-Internet).
Well, times have moved on and the internet has changed. Now we have Twitter. And yes, vending machines have evolved too: they have LED displays, soft lighting and wonderful clear-glass fronts, so we can watch the robot arm as it reaches up to the correct place and collects our desired beverage (or snack) for us.
In our modern era, we also have clever marketers who don’t miss a trick, like BOS’ digital agency Cow Africa, who were asked to come up with an original marketing tool to persuade people to try the product out.