SA advertising continues its proud history of using lobola as an effective creative concept.
For those who haven't seen this ad, it shows a black and a white guy driving up to a farmstead. An old man and his daughter appear in the doorway. The black guy shows the man a picture of a cow. The old man smiles when he sees the bakkie. End of ad.
Now, even before my young black female intern mentioned this ad to me, I wondered why on earth a young black guy would take his white friend to sort out the lobola issue. (Usually a man is accompanied by uncles.) Also, why does the white guy drive the bakkie? Surely it would be logical for the black hero to drive the car? And why show a picture of only one cow? (A herd would have made more sense.)
This ad seems to indicate a level of insensitivity on the part of the advertisers that I assumed would have been a thing of the past. My intern is certainly not impressed.