"The many positive developments around the awards lately not only prove that it is fast gaining in popularity in the marketing and creative industries, but also predict a healthy future for Afrikaans as well as truly South African advertising," says Pendoring GM, Franette Klerck.
Work in any of South Africa's 11 official languages can be entered in the Truly South African advertising category.
Due to its cash prizes for both the best Afrikaans and Truly South African work, this year's advertising campaign by Draftfcb has a twofold focus. On the one hand, it wants to attract a record number of entries and, on the other, it aims to improve the image of both the awards and Afrikaans advertising among the country's sharpest creative minds.
The creative team behind 2012's campaign is André de Wet (copywriter), Riaan van Wyk (art director), Aaron Harris and Doug Larter (creative directors), Mike Barnwell (executive creative director) and Francois de Villiers (former executive creative director at Draftfcb). Kronk and Clement de Bruin are responsible for the illustrations and the digital agency is BNRY.
The Prestige prize inspired this year's campaign, says De Wet, who with Van Wyk, won last year's Prestige prize for their Die Burger 'Praat Saam' campaign. They leave for New York shortly for their study tour.
"It is an honour to win a Pendoring. That's what inspired the campaign theme 'Vat oor', which translates as taking over," De Wet explains. "Like this year's slogan says, 'With R50 000 in your pocket, the world is your playground'."
The integrated campaign includes posters, print and viral ads, a radio ad and an online game that can be played on the website, was inspired by the posters of iconic sci-fi movies from the forties, fifties and sixties. Think of Godzilla invading Tokyo, the 50-Foot Woman destroying London or the enormous sea monster wrecking Sydney.
"We wanted to show in a fun way, how cool South African advertising can be and replaced these iconic monsters with typically South African creative characters.
"It's not just agencies who benefit from a campaign such as Pendoring," De Wet adds. "Marketers can 'take over' the heart of the Afrikaans market by advertising in their mother tongue. It is definitely one of the most profitable markets to do business in and the advertiser of the Prestige prize advertisement gets more than R2 million in free advertising."
Apart from the Prestige award of an overseas study tour worth R50 000 for the overall winner, the overall winner of the Truly South African categories for the first time will walk away with R20 000 in cash. According to Klerck, this is fitting, as this category annually yields some of the best and most impressive work.
Gold winners in the category for professional agencies (as well as student winners) will receive R6 000 in cash and silver winners in all categories will win R2 500 each. The overall student winner also wins an internship for 2013 with Draftfcb and a R10 000 study bursary.
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