Lately been researching and writing about postapartheid South African television ads. Mostly about national identity (so beer, cars, and ‘nation branding‘ ads). It meant I was trawling the net for ads. I may have missed something, but I have not seen any innovative TV ads that deal with the AIDS crisis in South Africa. I am not sure if LoveLife is still going, but I find their ad campaigns not useful and too vague in speaking to young people, the group most affected by the pandemic in South Africa.
As medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, has noted in a letter to the New York Review of Books, about LoveLife: it is “… a crassly Western, consumer-oriented program (the loveLife project) that promotes assertiveness, choice, empowerment, and positive approaches to safe sex, while skirting the depressing details of the epidemic which might alienate adolescents.”
In other words, it refuses to treat young people like adults and makes no reference to South Africa’s context.
Which brings me to this ads for MTV Belgium. The comments on the ad at Ads of the World, where I found this ad, is mixed. But I think it gets the message across. Here‘s another example of how it should be done.
