The creative and marketing quality of South African television advertising will continue to decline unless some creative way is found of reversing the current trend of embracing mediocrity.There was a time that when the subject of TV ads was raised at a dinner party, at least an hour of animated discourse would follow on everyone's favourite ads.Nowadays, the immediate reaction of guests is to look vague as they desperately try and remember some ad they have seen on TV and then carrying on animated conversations about electricity outages and the Machiavellian machinations of politics.
Brain drain
A lot of people tend to blame this decline of great TV advertising on the brain drain of creatives from South Africa but I disagree. South African creatives are world-class and as good as ever.
Any number of factors are impacting on ad quality today. Not the least of which is an ad agency management not having the balls to stand up to clients. If any brain drain is affecting advertising, it is the flight of top class brand managers from this country.
Advertising intelligence at brand management level is on average pretty dismal to say the least. Which mean that agencies often have to choose between doing what a naive client wants, even though it's completely wrong, or losing the account.
On top of this, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of South Africa is making it very difficult for anyone to push any sort of envelopes or stand out from the crowd for fear of upsetting some old tannie in Bredasdorp. And when ads are pulled by the ASA these days, clients invariably make the agencies pay. So, small wonder they are treading carefully and conservatively.
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