Virgin Active and Dulux jump on the red bandwagon

Topical advertising in South Africa is probably most synonymous with Nando’s. Some zingers (sorry Nando’s, didn’t mean to reference the competition) include ‘WTF, Juju? LOL’, commenting on Julius Malema’s plans to shut down Twitter, and ‘Smith, we’re hiring’, after South Africa’s poor performance at the Cricket World Cup.

But now, in the wake of Vodacom’s rebranding and the plentiful discussion around it, especially with the drastic change from blue and green to red, two big brands have jumped on the topical advertising bandwagon, ostensibly to capitalise on the topic the whole country has been talking about for the past week.

So, first up is Virgin Active – yes another red brand, sorry Vodacom, they do exist. It claims, rightly so, ‘We were red… first’, in simple white font on a bright red background. And then there’s paint brand, Dulux, which portrays its wide range of paint colours, with an arrow indicating that the red paint is sold out. The tagline is ‘We’re sold out of red, but we do have any other colour you can think of’. Personally, I love this, because the brand isn’t red and certainly isn’t competition to Vodacom, and yet it thought out-of-the-box to capitalise on the situation – especially considering the new Vodacom ads portray the ‘old favourite’ Vodacom characters literally painting over the old blue with bright red paint (the paint must be Dulux, right?).

And, not to be left out, 5FM DJ, Gareth Cliff has also got in on the action, with his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek as usual. He tweeted this morning, “I would just like to say, that I really don’t care that Vodacom is now yellow”, to which Vodacom responded, “But we love your show on 4FM”. Cliff continued, “Ha ha ha. That’s funny, but I only got half of it… my phone cut out ”… and the ‘dispute’ ended with Vodacom retorting, “hmmm must be the yellow network you’re using ”.

One thing’s for sure, South Africans love a bit of entertainment and wit, and Vodacom and the likes of Dulux, Virgin Active and Gareth Cliff are certainly delivering, whether you love the rebrand or hate it. All I can say is, Vodacom must be loving all this publicity – let’s hope it can live up to the hype with its service and product offering.

Click here to read more about how Cell C is fighting to keep top of mind with Google AdWords.