Orchids and onions: Haval ad does good job of getting buyers’ attention

If you’re a challenger brand entering a market which has years, or even decades, of preference for your potential competitors, it can seem like a daunting task to break preconceptions.

I remember as a child, when our family bought our first new car – a Datsun – people thought my parents were slightly mad … not only did my father fight against the Japanese in the war but the perception was that quality was only something you’d get from English products.

Albert Wessels, the man who founded the business which became Toyota South Africa, had an uphill task in the beginning, trying to convince Ford and Chev-driving farmers that his new Stout bakkie was better.

The quality of the Toyota ensured that it quickly established itself in the market … and kyk hoe lyk hulle nou.

The biggest marketing hurdle for Toyota and other Japanese auto brands, as they started testing global markets from the late ’50s and early ’60s, was to convince buyers of the quality of their products … that they were not “Jap crap” as the disparaging critics put it.

Chinese automakers are facing the same sort of challenges in present-day South Africa. While a huge proportion of our consumer goods originate in mainland China, cars from that country have had a patchy history in SA over the past 20 years.

Patel, shockingly bad at “reading the room” (gauging the depth of public feeling), was hailed in a tweet this week by his department, showing him “at work” at the site of a looting clean-up.

Work? What were you doing minister, to justify your multimillionrand salary? The last time we saw him doing work was when he was preventing people from wearing opentoed shoes or buying hot chickens at the height of the pandemic.

Many social media users reminded him of exactly that this week.

He looked more of a joke than his comrade, Fikile Mbalula, who, as transport minister, regularly gets ridiculed on Twitter.

So, Comrade Patel, an Onion for trying to appear relevant in public. Rather get on and do some real work.