The Sasol ads from the 80s have more than 1 million views on YouTube!?

The South African marketing landscape, greatly moulded to work in the restrictive apartheid era advertising regulations, found its speciality in creating memorable and emotive ads. Lately I’ve been thinking about the way this primed local advertisers to understand how to create striking digital content.?

Looking back, we see that South Africa has a rich library of impactful, cinematic TV commercials. Think of Sasol’s “Glug Glug” ad from the 80s, the Bell’s commercial or Allan Gray's “time” commercials. These ads tug at viewers’ heart strings, taking the emotive and tying it back to the brand’s core messaging.

I’m sure there are many, many more examples we can add as examples.?

This rooted sense of storytelling has translated extremely well into the digital world, with high production value, unique stories and engaging content taking the lead when it comes engagement rates and brand recognition.?

This trend, when linked with a mobile-first digital strategy, means these great ads can now enjoy a much greater life span.. The Sasol ads, for example, have more than 1 million views on YouTube, which definitely draws? an organic, engaged and searched-for audience. Most brands dream of creating this level of content and garnering such extensive reach.?

Now the counter to this would be to state that audiences on mobile devices are willing or able to take time to watch something, ads have to be 6, 15 or 30 seconds long. This has been proven false when netflix view times, podcast listening time and Facebook's 3 hours a day average time spent is taken into account.

People have time, and they are willing to take time to consume content, but they will absolutely skip, scroll and move on to something else if the content being presented to them is not on-point.

For me, this indicates a very exciting space where now, more than ever, it’s imperative that we experiment with outside-the-box thinking that pushes the bar on what authentic and captivating storytelling can be.?

What are your thoughts on this? Let me know, I am curious to see what you think.??