Vodacom & national braaiday

Local radio stations are currently running an advert for national braaiday to be held on 24 September (actually Heritage Day). The advert points one to their website at braaiday.co.za so I went along to have a look wondering what the deal is and who’s behind this.

In short the website tells me nothing about who is behind this and who’s spending all the money on advertising (the website itself is not an expensive under taking) and most importantly why.

In the FAQ section they say;

Q: So what's the catch?
A: There isn't one. National Braaiday is just a day for us all to celebrate our national pastime. If the Americans can have Thanksgiving, why can't we have Braaiday? In any event, no-one's sponsoring the day, so it's just a good, old-fashioned chance to get some people together for some hot food and cold drinks.

Sure thing, but why? Everything has a catch especially when money is involved!

Heading over to the Uniforum whois server gives one no further clues as the domain is registered to Entelligence Limited, a web hosting and design company. A call to the company gets a “we don’t comment on our clients websites” - fair enough.

So back to more digging and then I find the client list of Entelligence Limited and one name stands out - Vodacom.

Vodacom has long being trying to own summer and now it looks like it’s moving on braais and heritage day. If I am right I congratulate them on some smart marketing.

Anybody else know anything more?

Comments

well, i was the advertiser,

one guy walked in and gave us 1.5mil to make sure everyone knew about national braai day. he said it was his dream...

[Philip]

We have also had a tough time identifying the real advertiser. Vodacom sounds like a good bet though. As you can see on our website, they've been spending a lot of money on radio advertising. We'll dig deeper.

[Paul]

5FM is also going big on this, they're having a braai day at the V&A waterfront this Saturday.

[Anne]

Nice one, I was also wondering about this.