Orchids and Onions: A fitting star for Mazda

When I was in high school, there was a sad stereotype that only nerds played chess. And the only reason I learned to play the game was that the girl up the road (one of my early, unrequited, loves) said she would teach me.

My very basic chess skills – I didn’t pay enough attention to the chess during the lessons, okay? – only came to be roped in years later, when my son was at junior school and the parents got together to set up a chess club.

I had taught my son to play when he was about five years old and he was already able to beat me by the time he got to Grade 2.

I volunteered to train the beginner class and I saw first-hand the benefits of the game.

Mothers of brats (who needed good old-fashioned discipline rather than Ritalin) would come to tell me that chess had improvement their concentration, reduced their unruliness and boosted their school marks by 20 percentage points.

When my son played regular inter-schools and later inter-provincial tournaments, one of his heroes was South Africa’s first international chess grandmaster, Watu Kobese. He was the rock star in the world of these 11-year-olds. His success and his sharing of his talent helped bring many kids from the townships into the sport.

So, he is the fitting star of the latest in a series of commercials by car maker Mazda, put together by Grey Advertising Africa. These feature South Africans who have registered outstanding achievements in their field… and it is appropriate they chose Kobese as the hero in this one.

The spot is shot in moody available light and the sound track is Kobese speaking about chess and his life – and the important success of authoring a book about chess in isiXhosa. Up until then, nothing had been written about chess in this major African language.

Kobese talks about the essence of chess: “Precision, imagination, logic, problem solving.” That’s a mantra which fits perfectly with Mazda, a car brand known for both innovation and reliability.

By putting itself in the background in what are mini-documentary tributes to amazing South Africans, Mazda has shown that, as a brand, it is comfortable in its own skin.

It doesn’t have to show its cars screaming around country roads to cruising outside discos. No doubt they can do that, but their essence is the same as that of chess.

And that is an attractive – and comforting – message of quiet intelligence from a brand.

So, Orchids to Mazda, Grey, as well as director Ernest Nkosi of Bomb Commercials.

Less happy a marketing experience for a carmaker was the one I saw for Hyundai and a digital series of ads for its Venue compact SUV. When I was browsing a click bait-type website, up popped ads for the Hyundai Venue, with a price tag of R192 500.

I thought that was interesting because, as far as I know, the car is priced at about R100 000 more than that.

Sure, enough, when I checked on the Hyundai website, the price for the car was from about R291 000.

Clearly someone in Hyundai’s local digital agency doesn’t know the difference between 1 and 2. But, worryingly, no one, either at the agency or on client side signing it off, noticed.

This could have led to loss of business as angry potential clients followed up on the online ad and discovered a R100 000 difference in price.

You could forgive those people for believing they had been taken in, in a classic “bait and switch” scam. And they might well have headed elsewhere in anger.

Fortunately, Hyundai will not have to honour the advertised low price – because the digital ad makers did manage to include the safety net “E and O E” phrase. This means “errors and omissions excepted”… so, the advertiser is not liable to be held to a price legally if it was a genuine mistake.

Still, this had the potential to a bit of reputation damage to the brand – even though the Venue itself, which is selling like hotcakes, will likely be little affected.

Ads which risk damaging a brand deserve an Onion. There are two – for the digital agency responsible and for Hyundai itself for not being careful enough in checking.

Brendan Seery

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