Draftfcb Calls On Nation To Unite Behind Flag Post World Cup

Keep Flying!

Draftfcb South Africa, has respon­ded pos­it­ively to the nation’s post World Cup fears and launched a national cam­paign to retain the energy and pas­sion unleashed by the 2010 spec­tac­u­lar. Speaking in Johannesburg on Friday July 2, Draftfcb South Africa Group CEO, John Dixon, said the agency will act­ively enlist the sup­port of the country’s most loved brands to extend the sense of achieve­ment and self-belief we’ve achieved as a nation over the past few weeks.

Dixon explained: “As South Africans, we have exper­i­enced an unpre­ced­en­ted high dur­ing the World Cup month. Which means, given the proven fact that all host nations have suffered from post-event depres­sion, we’re due for an even lower low when the final teams and soc­cer tour­ists return home ...

“Well, at Draftfcb, we hap­pen to believe that South Africans can pass on the ‘dep­pie’ because we feel in our gut that we haven’t just been cel­eb­rat­ing soc­cer these past few weeks, we’ve been cel­eb­rat­ing us – our pas­sion, our drive, our spunk, our ‘gees’. That’s sev­eral damn good reas­ons to go on cel­eb­rat­ing. And the best way to do this is with our awe­some flag. Cos, the flag hasn’t actu­ally been a sym­bol of our soc­cer enthu­si­asm. It’s been a sym­bol of our enthu­si­asm for ourselves. Of what we can accomplish.

“We showed the world our true col­ours. And we showed our guests true African hospitality.

But most import­antly, we showed ourselves. We showed ourselves that with one spirit, we can do anything.

“The agency and all its staff in our three biggest cit­ies have there­fore com­mit­ted to wave our flags for 30 days after the final World Cup whistle has blown, and we’re chal­len­ging our cli­ents, our sup­pli­ers and our coun­try­men to do like­wise until we all – at the same time – stop, pause and cre­ate a Minute of Noise for South Africa by trum­pet­ing with our fam­ous vuvuzelas, hoot­ing the horns on our ‘chor­ries’, whist­ling, yelling, shout­ing. This will send a clear and loud mes­sage to the rest of the world: Africa’s time has come, South Africa’s time has come.”

To kick off the cam­paign, Draftfcb has spoken to its cli­ents to ini­ti­ate massive internal staff drives cel­eb­rat­ing South Africa and rein­force a sense of pride in its World Cup achievement.

It has also shown cli­ents how the concept can trans­late into their exist­ing advert­ising and mar­ket­ing cam­paign, and is cur­rently com­pil­ing a manual detail­ing how other com­pan­ies and brands can sim­il­arly join in. Lexus became the first brand to join the agency in its bid to fly the flag by agree­ing to include the device in all three of its tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials it will be run­ning dur­ing the period.

In addi­tion, the agency is record­ing a song it will dis­trib­ute to the country’s radio sta­tions, and invest­ig­at­ing ways to get the flag flown high over South Africa’s cit­ies in the month ahead.

Said Dixon: “You know, Draftfcb believes pas­sion­ately in South Africa and its people, and we’ll be put­ting our heart and soul behind the flag for months and years to come. But we don’t want to retain own­er­ship of this concept we’ve developed, we want any com­pany, any brand, any media owner who iden­ti­fies with our pas­sion and shares our com­mit­ment to our coun­try, to join us and intro­duce the ini­ti­at­ive to their own audi­ences in their own way.

“Come on cor­por­ate South Africa; let’s show the coun­try and the world that the end of the World Cup, is our begin­ning,” he said.

Any com­pany want­ing to join the Fly the Flag ini­ti­at­ive can obtain the neces­sary art­work and accom­pa­ny­ing details from Draftfcb Johannesburg by email­ing Heidi Nelson on heidi.nelson@draftfcb.co.za