» Wild and woolly advertising

Wild and woolly advertising

November 27th, 2009

Two adverts caught my eye: Sunday Time’s giant front pages on buildings across Joburg and a mysterious bottle of whisky in the middle of a page in The Times.

The giant ST billboards are eye-catching, for sure. But try and read that headline: “SA’s biggest weekend read 3 997 000 readers Amps 2009A.” Even the much-depleted Sunday Times subs-room would not let through a headline like that.

SA's worst headline on Killarney Mall

I expect they wanted to say they had 4-million readers, but someone would have pointed out another near-accurate Sunday Times headline. Fact is that the Daily Sun has forced them to add the word weekend. Just a few years ago, the words “SA biggest read” would have been more catchy. And “South Africa’s second-biggest read” doesn’t quite do it.

I think they are trying to tell us that even though sales are down (to 490 000), readership is up. But why would the general public want to know this? And what do they make of AMPS 2009A? Surely advertising aimed at agencies should be aimed at agencies. I can’t see people flocking to the paper because of AMPS 2009A.

But then those guys at the ST are smarter than me at selling newspapers, so maybe I have got it all wrong.

Another surprise was a bottle of whisky which dominated page 10 of The Times, the business page, running right through all the stories. I looked for the story tied to the picture or the caption to explain it. Nothing. Then I saw a little word next to it: Advertisement.

Who owns this page?

Well, The Times is certainly being flexible in its approach to advertising. But one can’t help feeling queezy at the selling of what appears to be editorial space.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Print

2 Comments Add your own

1. amandzing | January 12th, 2010 at 11:20 am

if i were the advertiser, i’d have something to say about te fact my product is placed between two articles that say the economy is on a downturn….
2. Willie Stuyger | January 18th, 2010 at 7:15 pm

Actually, Anton, the headline does not read as you quoted it — you managed to misquote it despite having the photo slap-bang in your face. So on what kind of subs’ desk would YOU cut the mustard, eh?

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Anton Harber: Media

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.

What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)