NICO BOTHA

Being grown-up isn't all it's cracked up to be. So much life admin and responsibilities. Just take one look at social media under #adulting. People just don't like it.

With this campaign, we wanted to show that not all adulting is bad. At least you can have a great car with features that help you with your adulting. 

We got two South African comedians to star in our online content videos, short funny sketches about adulting, around the Ford Focus. Nothing too hard-sell brand, just good fun. 

We also targeted people on social media with posts on Facebook and Twitter under #adulting and our own #AdultWell. The campaign was very well received and a second phase, with two new comedians followed soon.

With this campaign for the Ford Everest we wanted to tell extraordinary stories. It's global product line is Journey Extraordinary after all. To find these stories we went on a search for South Africans that fit into our target market and had extraordinary stories to tell. Stories of people who started with a disadvantage and made a success out of their careers.

We first found the extraordinary Nontwenthle Mchunu, a young woman from Kwazulu-Natal who became a very successful chocolatier. She started small, whilst she herself was pretty small and ended up supplying her much sought after range of chocolates to 5-star hotels amongst others. She's now moving onto even bigger things. Her story was the first content piece to be released and would seed the next two.

We decided to find more people with stories like hers but not just settling for that we wanted them to help us create the campaign. First there was Thabang Moleya, film director, to shoot our campaign and Tresor Risiki, well-known singer and songwriter to create the beautiful music for the campaign. Their extraordinary stories featured in the second and third content pieces and speak for themselves.

It was, and still is, a full 360 campaign with work that featured on television, social media and lots of digital elements that told their stories, but also feature the Ford Everest and everything that's impressive about it. But the three content pieces were the jewels in the crown of the campaign. It's where everything started. Our campaign ended up being quite an extraordinary journey in itself.

Every year Ford South Africa runs a very successful retail property called Truck Month. A month or so where the Ford Ranger is sold at reduced prices. These size trucks, utes or "bakkies" as they're known in South Africa, are very popular.

We noticed that all the brands promote the toughness of their trucks. Owning the phrase "Built Ford Tough", our idea was to poke fun of the segment and how everyone is talking tough.

These online content pieces followed on a TV commercial that showcased some tough talking and what happens when you can't back it up like Ford can.

We created a print campaign for a South African hotel group that offer four different levels of luxury, from 1 star to 4. 

Silver Lion at Cannes.

The SYNC3 infotainment system in Ford vehicles is very state of the art. Amongst a whole host of features, it also has one that reads your text messages to you when you're driving. We employed a Ford Focus to be recording studio and voice artist for its own radio campaign.

"Launch a radio station," they said.

"It will be fun," they said.

"Make it good!" they said.

And of course, they also said: "Do it with no money."

So we did.

Standard Bank launched a brand new banking app and briefed us to do the launch campaign. We came up with the idea that this new app will make banking feel as exciting as when you got your first bank card as a child again. So we created this beautiful spot, showing this child-like excitement. It was the heart and soul of a much broader 360-degree campaign.

We were the new team at a new agency and we were given a brief that had the potential to make or break us at our new job. We had to do the call-to-action campaign for the annual Loerie Awards, the showcase of South African creative work, which meant our target market was our fellow creatives. A very critical bunch at best.

We came up with a fully integrated campaign called "Be the most famous you", that turned out to be a hit.

Promo & Activation shortlist at Cannes Lions.

This winter promotion for the fizzy apple drink was to try and increase sales during the colder winter months. We targeted women in select restaurants and bars with what we called The Little Green Number.

In this era of Tinder, online dating and Facebook, ladies are on a lot of dates. Sometimes on dates they'd rather cut short. The Little Green Number was a way out.

Whenever someone ordered an Appletiser, they'd get a coaster with it. On the coaster was a unique code they could text to The Little Green Number if they wanted to get the hell out of wherever they were. They'd then get an automated phone call from a "friend" or "babysitter" that would give them an excuse to leave.