#Orchids&Onions: SAB drives a hard message home, KFC does ESG right
A hard-hitting truth on our roads
If the driver were to hit the brakes on any surface, never mind the oily and rain-slick roads which are the norm at this time of year, that truck would become an unguided missile, bound to kill some innocents.
Hopefully, the “no more Mr Nice Guy” approach by the government, through the Aarto (Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offence) legislation will start to make a difference by holding both drivers and companies accountable for such a state of affairs.
The driver I saw would be fined and get “demerit” points on his licence – and if those hit 15, he would lose that document and have to go through the whole process of requalifying.
The company wouldn’t be able to ignore its fine either, because if it did, it would find it wouldn’t be able to license its fleet. And, no doubt, were insurers to find out about their unroadworthy vehicles, they could lose their cover.
What’s that rant got to do with marketing and advertising?
Why the proposed ban on alcohol advertising has a valid point
Well, I must wonder, given the appalling behaviour on our roads and our horrific annual motoring death toll, whether all those well-meaning public service adverts about road safety – and specifically about drinking and driving – over the years have made the slightest bit of difference.
The latest one is excellent, however. Produced for SA Breweries by the We Are Bizarre, it’s been around for a while but popping up on our screens as the festive season madness approaches.
It’s not easy to watch, because, frankly, there but for the grace of God, go many of us on our highways when people booze and then get behind the wheel of a car… or truck.
Ndiphiwe Oliphant and three of his friends were killed by a person driving so intoxicated that the blood-alcohol level in his blood was six times the national limit.
It is like a blade to the heart to hear his mother, Sarah, recall that, even now, one of her friends will never forget the blood-curdling scream she let out when hearing of Ndiphiwe’s death.
As she and the dead young man’s aunt recall how their lives were turned upside down – he was an only child – bits and pieces of a wrecked care assemble around them, accompanied by a mask of his face. But is only part of his face because he never lived to enjoy a whole, full life.
It’s another gut punch ad – and Orchids to SAB for commissioning it and to We Are Bizarre for executing it. Let’s just hope to gets through to those people who drink and drive. And who become killers on our roads.
Add Hope keeps proving its worth
ESG, so Google’s AI Overview tells me, stands for environmental, social, and governance, a set of criteria used by investors and organisations to evaluate a company's sustainability and ethical practices.
A recent example of how to do it….
KFC has been running the highly effective Add Hope campaign to provide school children with meals for 15 years now. Its customers have the option to add a donation of R2 to each purchase, which goes to the programme.
Over the years, more than R1bn has been raised – R400m from KFC and R600m from customers – making it arguably the most effective campaign of its type in South Africa.
The company believes that its Add Hope “recipe” is something which can be copied by other corporates, so it launched a slightly cheeky, but always optimistic programme to get the message across.
With a teaser sent across Africa and to Europe, KFC promised to reveal its “secret recipe”, which, naturally, got a few tongues wagging – which was the objective. It even attracted attention from some competitors and a nod of approval from some.
The “reveal” of the Add Hope blueprint was accompanied by an interesting and valuable project with about 60 digitally savvy Gen Z students.
This cohort is often accused, by older generations, of being self-absorbed and forever buried in their various screens. KFC’s “hunger hackathon” showed they are anything but.
Different teams put together some really radical – but implementable – ideas to combat hunger. These ranged from a programme to track food which is about to be thrown out – perhaps for time or quality reasons – from farms.
The foods, once tracked, can then be channelled to places or programmes in need of it.
Another idea was an app that would allow KFC customers to track their R2 donation all the way from a restaurant to a feeding line. Sure, there might be those who say this is all just cynical marketing. But the figures cannot be denied – and nor can the impact on the lives that the Add Hope project has changed over the years.
The other benefit was to give people a different view of Gen Z young people, who are passionate about dealing with global problems and using tech to do so. That adds its own bit of hope for the future.
An Orchid to KFC for, yet again, putting its money where its mouth is in looking beyond just the bottom line. Consumers will increasingly be looking for this sort of ESG scorecard before putting down their money.
There is a lesson there…
