The latest Cadbury TV commercial is a breath of fresh spring air because it is whimsical and different.
To talk about the bubbles in its chocolate bars, Cadbury’s tells us that the milk from which the chocolate bars are produced comes from a special breed of “lighter than air” cows.
The graphics are great and will be especially appealing to children (and to the child within the adult)… and remind us that chocolate is a special thing.
(Mind you, the bars may look the same, but all that air means they weigh less, so you get less chocolate than you would in a “normal” one… oops, sorry – didn’t mean to ruin the illusion.)
A light, floaty Orchid for Cadbury’s.
Why, oh why are we so besotted with things American… and especially the American accent?
I despair sometimes (no, make that a lot of the time) when I hear ads – and especially radio ones – with an American voice-over artist.
That’s annoying enough, but when the American accent comes via Bloemfontein through a local “actor” and sounds phonier than a Kevin Pietersen apology, I get doubly irritated.
Also, when we start using American clichés, which are totally irrelevant to SA society and the origins of which are a mystery to most people in this country, I get angry.
The latest Nedbank Greenbacks TV ad is one which thinks it is in Brooklyn, New York, not Brooklyn, Pretoria.
The bouncy host talks about “the whole nine yards” and the “whole enchilada”.
But what exactly do those expressions mean?
I had to look them up. The “whole nine yards” has so many explanations that not even the Americans themselves are sure of where it comes from.
The “whole enchilada” is likewise clouded in mystery. Both roughly mean to get everything… but don’t we have our own South Africanisms we could use?
Recycling may be good for the planet, but recycling the idioms and culture of another country smacks of intellectual laziness, so an Onion to go with your enchilada, Nedbank.
Even worse, though, was a radio ad I heard for the Organ Donor Foundation… in American.
Why on Earth do we need an American accent to convince us that it is a good idea to donate our organs after death to help our fellow South Africans? Is America a synonym for honesty and integrity? Don’t think so.
And, given the need to spread the message about organ donation in a way which is culturally acceptable to South Africans, how clever is it to use a foreigner giving the explanations?
Another Onion… supersized.
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