There are very few consolations for the travails visited upon the hapless driver of a motor vehicle in South Africa these days.
Potholes, busted traffic lights, traffic backed up to Zimbabwe, the fine and upstanding team members of the various traffic departments, your fellow drivers and the bottomless pit of guilt for the plight of the less fortunate who are hamming it up at every intersection.
The only respite from this litany of woe is the sudden appearance of a witty billboard in your line of sight. Something to lighten the spirit, capture the mood of the nation and fire up the imagination.
It’s the kind of public service work that excites Dean Oelschig, the founder and managing partner of independent agency Halo. The company was awarded the coveted Grand Effie accolade at the Effies South Africa 2024 competition for most effective campaign, and won the small agency and overall agency categories in the Financial Mail’s AdFocus awards.
Halo’s wry Pineapple insurance adverts hit the traffic despair sweet spot and earned them all the accolades.
We are sitting at the Fishmonger in Illovo with a great big pile of really good sushi. The ad agency’s offices are upstairs and I am getting what feels like a master class in advertising and creative practice.
“Advertising used to be uninvited guests in people’s homes, right?” said Oelschig.
“We used to have an audience of people sitting around dinner at night with their families, and we respected that. And now it’s gone from this world of trying to seduce audiences to actually stalking audiences. It’s about shouting and screaming at audiences.
“And I think that no-one wants that. Advertising needs to try to earn the attention of people again. And I think that’s what the great work used to do, and that’s the kind of stuff that we are trying to do.”
I am just an eternal optimist and too stubborn to fail. I’m not saying we deserve any gold stars, but I think it’s too easy to find reasons why it shouldn’t work, and it’s too easy to quit.
— Dean Oelschig
Born and raised in Mthatha, Oelschig fell in love with the industry when he job shadowed in an agency when he was 16. His father insisted on accounting at university but he very rapidly worked his way back to his first love after a stint in the wine industry.
“I really had no business starting an agency at 29. It probably should not have worked, it probably should have failed multiple times and it almost did multiple times.”
I wonder which of his personality attributes helped to keep the enterprise afloat?
“I am just an eternal optimist and too stubborn to fail. I’m not saying we deserve any gold stars, but I think it’s too easy to find reasons why it shouldn’t work, and it’s too easy to quit,” he replied.
“What’s hard is actually doing the hard things, getting through it, making it work. In hindsight, it took a lot longer than it probably should have, but also maybe the fact that it took so long has given us huge appreciation for where we are and the gratitude to appreciate what we have. You don’t take the first 14 years for granted, because you know how hard we worked for it.”
At the heart of his vision is a deep appreciation for design. “Traditional agencies hire traditional advertising people, copywriters and art directors. We always hire designers. I like the way designers think. They think about the problem really empathetically. They put the consumer at the centre of the problem.”
I wonder how AI will further compound the creative crunch. “So what’s going to happen with AI is mediocrity will become free and pervasive and great creativity will become more in demand — obviously I’m biased to say that.”
What will foster creativity in this dry season?
“Creativity does not come from an easy childhood, or an easy path and perfect upbringings. I almost believe there’s a study to be done that can prove that you have to have a little bit of disadvantage or hardship in your life. Just look at Trevor Noah.
“We try to get people to think with pens and paper, not computers. I think that’s important. Creativity in the world is in crisis, but I think creativity, specifically in South Africa, is in crisis.”
In the 1990s and 2000s South African advertising was “shit hot”.
“We were globally respected. We were in the top five in the world. And now we’re 18th or something last year,” Oelschig said.
“And we are better than that. We have all the talent in the world. There’s just been a gap because the seniors left. There was no middle coming through. There was this influx of juniors, and then there was no-one to train them, and our seniors are running all the top agencies in the English-speaking world. So now we’ve got this new potential. It’s there for the taking.”
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