This is what happens when you mistake a Venda for a vendor!
South Africa (18 December 2020) – One of the things that brings South Africans together is our ability to laugh at ourselves and at all the cultural differences that make our rainbow nation so fab. King Price knows this better than most: Their TV ads invariably get people talking, sometimes gasping – but always laughing!
Remember the motorist and the traffic cop haggling about a braai? Or the young man who wanted to pay his lobola with a kettle? And who can forget the farmer doing something sexy to a tractor? Well, they’ve just done it again, with an ad that shows what happens if you mistake a Venda for a vendor.
“We’re unapologetically South African, and we just love creating irreverent ads that celebrate our differences and cultural diversity to make the point that, in today’s world, a lot of things just don’t make sense,” says King Price partner of marketing, Natalie Bisset.
“Our brand tonality is light and fun. We want to take the ‘grudge’ out of insurance, and if there’s an opportunity to make our clients – and our country – laugh, we’ll take it.”
Natalie says that the idea for their vendor ad came from a total stranger who’s become a royal family friend.
“We often get emails from random people suggesting concepts, and this one tickled our funny bones. It also ticked all the boxes, and so we decided to go for it!”
First, King Price bounced the idea off the chief of the vhaVenda people, to gain his approval. When he finally stopped laughing, he said ‘yes, of course!’. Then, King Price proudly cast some of their vhaVenda staff members in starring roles, along with Bennie Fourie – 1 half of Freckle, the agency that helps King Price to bring their crazy ad ideas to life. (The other half is Bouwer Bosch, who worked behind the scenes for this ad.)
Natalie admits that the pressure’s firmly on the creative team to keep coming up with the goods. But there’s a method to their silliness: This ad is part of a campaign called ‘when others don’t make sense, we do’ – which talks directly to the fact that it just doesn’t make “sense to pay the same every month, to insure something that’s worth less” every month.
‘Vendor’ is the seventh ad in the campaign. Most of the ads went viral all over the world within minutes of being released on social media, and this one is no exception.