FNB - How can we help you?

FNB - How can we help you?
8 November 2012

FNB – How can we help you?  Well for starters, you can kill Steve.  Seriously, you can.  Just a suggestion though – use it, don’t use it.  It’s your choice entirely.  Personally, I’d like to suggest something particularly gruesome and violent.  Maybe start off slow and then work your way up to the heavy stuff.  You know, paper cuts between his fingers and toes in the beginning and then letting the violence escalate progressively.  Perhaps electrical currents connected to vital male parts.  Possibly ending with dismemberment – oh please can I watch?  Alternatively, you could just try firing him and doing better radio ads.  I’m sure you have the necessary resources available to do just that.  I mean for heaven’s sakes!  You’re friggin FNB and thanx to Steve, I now know that you’re a subsidiary of First Rand Bank Limited.  So you’ve got the big bucks – step it up a notch!

Without a doubt, those FNB adds, featuring the dim-witted Steve are particularly trying.  I am not alone and a solitary sufferer – many have voiced similar feelings.  And judging by the sound of his voice – even Steve is getting tired of doing it.  And jeez, who can blame him.  The way that dude has to deal with abuse and rejection from fellow annoyed customers can only be increasingly disturbing.  It’s actually amazing that the guy hasn’t simply just done a “goodbye cruel world already”.  To date he has tried pawning off the opening of an account from ####### Bank onto virtual strangers, his aged aunt, parents, grandmother, uncle, etc. - with no joy.  Always and predictively leading the prospective customer to urge Steve to rather join FNB as they offer the proverbial world.  And though FNB are getting the partial desired effect of creating brand awareness, I suspect that it comes at a hefty price.  I would walk over hot coals, followed by broken glass to avoid opening an FNB account.  And just this week, I braved lengthy queues at Capitec Bank to open an account there instead.

Ads have an amazing ability to extract extreme emotions from people – virtually the whole spectrum of emotion.  They can make you laugh, feel empathy, bring you to tears, make you think, question beliefs and even make you angry.  Some have stood the test of time and will forever more be cherished in our memories.  Adopted into our culture and becoming SAfricanisms in the process.  Things are not inside they’re on top!  Drinks are served with eish, ja with eish.  For years and years we did our shopping twolley for twolley.  Yebo Gogo became a verb, and adjective and a noun.  Volkswagen ads are legends – most of them taking one on an emotional rollercoaster of feelings.  And who can forget ja-Boet and old Swaer.  The young man courting his girlfriend with exotic coffee names from the Wimpy menu, really getting her engine racing because “ag, Henry, I love it when you talk foreign”.  This said in a heavy Afrikaans accent, while Henry is saying words like “Machiato”.  Henry’s cherry gets so excited, she spontaneously pops a button on her blouse.  Too cute for words and just the thought of it still makes me laugh.  And then there was the add with the blonde bimbo (no offence to blondes around the world – this girl just happened to be both dof and blonde – a coincidence I’m sure – draw your own conclusions) who couldn’t find her fries on her plate – this because the rather large mound of her artificial breasts seriously impeded her vision – a Nando’s gem.  And in fact Nando’s are known for their tongue in cheek and witty humour.  Sharp off the mark and slightly naughty too.

Ads can popularise a song, giving it virtual anthem status.  It can make or break a career.  It can turn a just about unknown into an overnight celeb.  People can base entire careers on appearing in ads, especially if an ad does well, and follow-ups are done.  The dude sporting the leopard skin tanga in the Vodacom ads surely made a pretty pot of money from showing off his hairy tush, chest and back.  And somehow, with just an opening bar or two of the song from a particularly catching ad, you can be transported back into time.  Remembering way back when…..

If you’re ever bored and feel like killing a bit of time, then I suggest you go onto Youtube and take a trip down the memory lane of some of our awesome SA ads.  We’ve done really well and have had a few masterpieces.  Ad agencies continually stretch the boundaries, push the limits and create brief minute long snippets of magic.

And below I’d like to add just two.  Sit back, relax and enjoy. 

Enjoy this little nugget – Boet and Swaer – a true classic  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayoz5jEyuXo&feature=player_detailpage

And then there’s the crème de la crème – the Cremora ad - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_t15vNuXP0&feature=player_detailpage

So, Steve, all I can say is take a page out of these books.  Move to FNB already and get on with it.  PLEASE!!!  Get a life, before I consider snuffing yours.