Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Image: Fashion Gone Rogue

Words: Emma Remington

Southern Comfort, the brand from New Orleans which represents a distinctive ‘joie de vivre’ has launched Southern Comfort “Creative Exchange”. Drawing from the success of the international campaign, Creative Exchange invites local young creatives to design a striking interpretation of the brand and its provenance. The competition is  now open for entries… So read on to find out how to get involved!

Drawing from the success of a similar campaign held in Germany last year, Southern Comfort South Africa is appealing to all local designers of legal drinking age. From students to up-and-coming creatives – as they say in New Orleans, “come one, come all.” Participants are required to design a two-dimensional piece of artwork which includes an element of the Southern Comfort brand and an expression of its birthplace – New Orleans.

New Orleans is one of a kind. Its music, cuisine, architecture, cultural traditions, neighbourhood bars and wide-ranging mix of people passionate about those things sets the city apart from the world as a place devoted to the lifestyle of “Always for Pleasure”. Martin Wilkes Heron followed the pleasure-centric New Orleans when he invented Southern Comfort in 1874. Using a special flavour concentrate of fruits and spices, he made the harsh tasting whiskey of the time taste delicious. Studying the secrets of modern-day Southern Comfort makes it clear that M.W. Heron’s invention is still all about pleasure.

“Create Exchange” Competition

Through a panel of locally renowned design fundis, the entries  for Southern Comfort’s “Creative Exchange” will be shortlisted to the top five pieces. These pieces will be uploaded to the Southern Comfort SA Facebook page, where brand fans can vote for their favourite design.

What’s in it for the winner? The opportunity to showcase their work on a promotional range of branded Southern Comfort merchandise, a R12K cash prize and exposure in local design publication one small seed. Second place will receive a cash prize of R6K, followed by R3K for the third best design.

The competition opens this week and runs until 15 July 2011. Entrants are required to create a 2D design, which needs to include an element of the Southern Comfort brand and tap into the modern spirit of New Orleans. For more information about the design specs, terms and conditions and judging process, visit  Southern Comfort SA Facebook page or email: southern_comfort@pobox.southerncomfort.com

Just under a year ago we featured the wonderful ad campaign for The Zimbabwean by TBWA Hunt Lascaris Johannesburg, a campaign that highlighted the worth of the Zimbabwean dollar bill by using it to create actual billboards, posters and other outdoor advertising, as a meme representative of Zimbabwe’s plummeting socio-economic circumstances. This year, the same agency has been asked to create another campaign for the newspaper, and once again, they have done themselves, The Zimbabwean and the country’s people proud.

Named The Voiceless Campaign, it pays tribute to the tenet of the Zimbabwean: to give a voice to the voiceless. The posters feature the work of photojournalists working in Zimbabwe over the last two years, many of which were banned by Mugabe and the ZANU-PF regime after police raided an exhibition in Harare as it opened. The photojournalists donated their work to the campaign in an effort to prevent their work from being silenced. The images direct people to the Zimbabwean website, where the context of each image is explained by written accounts by the photojournalists and located on a satellite map.

Here’s a video explaining the campaign.

For those who missed it, here’s the article on last year’s campaign, courtesy of onesmallseed.net:

This is a really smart advertising campaign by TBWA/Hunt Lascaris for a small Zimbabwean newspaper (The Zimbabwean). Quipped ‘The World’s first Trillion Dollar advertising campaign’, it draws on that oft-repeated gibe that it’s cheaper to use Zim dollars as toilet paper these days. I saw the ad recently on a billboard at JHB airport and it really is an ad printed on money that has been carefully woven together like tapestry.

A work of art in itself, it is poignant and so very pertinent. I imagine the ad would be illegal in Zimbabwe and so it really speaks volumes to the power of media in facilitating free speech in the face of suppressive regimes that sadly have much of the continent in a stranglehold.

The ad serves to help create awareness and support of the Zimbabwean newspaper which has been a voice in the wilderness for Zimbabwean exiles for the past 3½ years. As described by the newspaper, ‘One of the most eloquent symbols of Zimbabwe’s collapse is the Z$100 trillion dollar note, a symptom of its world record inflation. This note cannot buy anything, not even a loaf of bread and certainly not any advertising, but it can become the advertising – a powerful reminder about Zimbabwe’s plight and the need to hold someone accountable.’

The campaign was also run in downtown Johannesburg and includes posters, flyers, and billboards all using Zimbabwe currency.