TBWA South Africa are getting all serious on us here, and interestingly they're using viral videos as a main component in their campaign that aims to reach and teach todays youth in South Africa. They ask: What's to become of a celebrity-obsessed generation that's forgetting its history? and went out to prove that Chuck Norris and Britney are more easily recognized by South Africa's youth than the apartheid movements biggest names like Steve Biko, Joe Slovo, and Oliver Tambo. The social lesson here is that cultural history heritage is drowned out by celeb-stalking, but what is more interesting is the campaigns execution, using kids on the street as their viral victims who may just send the films on to their friends. Or perhaps, their friends will pass it on just to mock them.
We had a suspicion that a lack of interest in the Museum was part of a larger societal problem. A mere sixteen years after the fall of Apartheid, our history and the lessons it can teach us were being systematically forgotten. So we decided to expose the reality. And start a conversation. After all, the most important step in addressing a problem is knowing that there is one. So we took to the streets and interviewed our youth directly. We simply asked them to identify a series of famous people. First popular culture icons and lastly a famous anti-apartheid leader. Our suspicion turned to reality. Over 86% of the people interviewed easily recognized the popular figures and failed to identify the South African anti-apartheid leader.
This guy is so happy he nails Chuck Norris, he demonstrates a roundhouse kick, sorta.
We turned these interviews into television, radio, and viral adverts, to be launched on the days leading up to Freedom Day, a national holiday to mark our nation's transition from apartheid to democracy. We let the sobering truth of the interviews work for us. What is the consequence of this ignorance? That a history forgotten is a future lost.
There are dozens of songs written about Steve Biko, yet this girl with the headphones doesn't know a single one of them. Sad.
