SAB Hits the Road in South Africa

We’re popping over to South Africa for this Ad Of The Week, where agency Boundless have created a truly spectacular piece of work for the country’s SAB Brewery and their 130th anniversary. SAB’s red delivery trucks are a familiar sight on the country’s 750,000 kilometres of road, so the brand made them the centrepiece of the ad.

Boundless and SAB created a “truck train” (which at full length stretches for 3 whole kilometres itself) with 130 trucks – one for each year of the company’s history. Each truck has the year on the side, with an image from that year, and each represents one of 130 commitments SAB has made to South Africa. The massive scale of the undertaking not only makes for some amazing visuals in the ad, it means the commercial can serve as a reminder of the journey the country and its people have made over those decades.

The emotional climax of the ad comes when we see the 1994 truck pass by, the year of South Africa’s first election after apartheid, but there’s room for sporting and cultural celebrations too as well as company milestones. It’s a creative idea that turns an everyday object – the branded delivery truck – into a monumental piece of living history.

The ad also shows ordinary South Africans reacting joyfully to the trucks, cheering and honking their horns as they pass. It’s a reminder that what sets this campaign apart from the average anniversary celebration is its physicality. This isn’t just a video ad, it’s also a brilliant piece of Out Of Home marketing, making the sight of a beer delivery truck into a social, shareable event. It’s a highly original use of a brand’s distinctive assets and a way of making the impact of the campaign last far longer in the real world.

Those cheering passers-by are reflected in SAB’s Test Your Ad scores for the 130-years ad. It earns a strong 4.2-Star Rating from the general public in South Africa, way higher than the 2.7-Star average for South African TV ads. It also gets good scores in short-term Spike Rating and in Brand Fluency (rapid recognition). In this case though, as a major brand equity building campaign, the Star Rating is the one SAB needed to perform well in, and they’ve easily achieved that.

What lessons can brands outside South Africa take from this campaign? The main one is that a campaign focusing on legacy and heritage doesn’t have to be static or self-centred. By giving its legacy solid physical form and taking it to South Africa’s highways, SAB and Boundless have made history literally come to life and scored a very memorable success.