Orchids and Onions: Land Rover’s Discovery Sport ad is spot-on for lockdown

All the “normal” ads we see on our screens these days seem slightly unreal – people having fun in bars and restaurants, kids playing in groups outside, millennials partying at a concert…

However, one ad which caught my attention did so precisely because it looked like it had been shot in the midst of lockdown. Land Rover’s new commercial for its Discovery Sport model features the car gliding over deserted roads, so it’s bang-up-date contemporary.

However, when I looked a bit closer, I saw the car was driving on the right hand side of the road – opposite to the default in South Africa. But the scenery was clearly South Africa.

And I realised that Land Rover had shot the ad for use globally – and there are executions featuring both left- and right-hand-drive versions. That is not the first time this has been done by global car makers – because SA is a wonderful place in terms of settings and, when you’re paying in dollars, euros or pounds, it is dirt cheap, too.

So, the Discovery Sport – a moderately capable Land Rover off-road, while not in the same league as the company’s Range Rovers, Defenders or even the full-size Discovery itself – fits so well into the landscape and is showcased in a variety of terrain.

One execution features the car traversing a game reserve and coming into contact with an elephant, a cheetah and zebras. The kids inside are awestruck.

When I saw the ad for the first time, I had a yearning (probably pent-up from the time under house arrest) to get out into the great South African outdoors … as will many who see it. And, those well-heeled enough and with families – and who’d like to get into the bush a little without becoming the expeditionary Camel Man – will see the “Disco” Sport in its natural habitat.

It works as advertising and gets an Orchid from me … although perhaps there is more than a little longing in that decision.

The coronavirus crisis will see many companies folding – and others could see their brand image and profitability decline in the post-Covid-19 world because of the cynical things they have done. Whatever else emerges, it will certainly get many people thinking about consumerism and about the morality and ethics of capitalist business.

In the UK, polls have shown that consumers are wary about giving business back to those companies they believe acted selfishly or unethically.

One such is Virgin, the airline started by billionaire Richard Branson. At the beginning of the crisis, he told staff to take eight weeks’ unpaid leave and is now wanting a soft loan of £600 million (about R14 billion) to prevent Virgin Atlantic from going under.

All the while, he owns a whole island and is worth $4 billion, or about R76 billion. (To be fair, he has offered to put up that Caribbean island as collateral for loans to help his ailing airline…)

Will consumers notice those reserve-flush companies who fired workers or forced them to take unpaid leave, or cut salaries? Will those companies see their products boycotted, post-crisis?

Then, there is the case of finding your brand accused of profiteering from the crisis, as did national pharmacy chain Dis-Chem this week, when the Competition Commission threatened to fine it 10% of its turnover for inflating the prices of surgical masks as demand for these soared.

The problem for Dis-Chem, from a purely marketing communication and reputation management point of view, is that it was so badly handled that the company’s reaction undoubtedly made things worse, at least in the minds of the public.

Dis-chem CEO Ivan Saltzman made a hash of things in a national interview with the tough Sakina Kamwendo of SABC. He stumbled over his words, sounded evasive and got touchy in a thoroughly unconvincing performance.

Where were Dis-Chem’s PR advisers in all this? They must have known this was coming, so why was the CEO so manifestly unprepared for the barrage Kamwendo fired at him? His claim was that Dis-Chem’s pricing reflected what its suppliers were doing in hiking their prices.

Knowing that would be the company’s response, why did Saltzman not have a sheaf of examples – dates, times, prices and supplier company names – to back up his arguments? Why did he not have similar information to back up his assertion that the commission had not compared apples with apples when it came to mask pricing, because there are several different types of mask?

Most of all, why was Saltzman not prepared properly – and why was this not done some time before the crisis? This example proves the immense value of having a company’s top personnel trained in how to deal with the media.

There is no doubt Dis-chem is doing many other good things in connection with the outbreak, although these will be overshadowed by the poor response to the commission’s findings.

This should be a lesson to all South African corporates about the value of PR.

Brendan Seery.

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