the corner office

This week started out promising to be pleasant, but things went South very quickly. I started the week with one crisis, and since then crisis after crisis after crisis have stacked up. Instead of battling through a crisis knowing that I'll be free and relaxed on the other end, this week just feels like I'm just popping crises off the stack, to get back to the crises that I was worrying about earlier in the week. I feel I'm like a cat covering crap on a marble floor.

(Yes, that's an old line, but it's apt :-)

Speaking of pets and crap, the puppies are cute, but only in small doses. Thank heavens our flat is tiled, is all I'm going to say.

Odd thought: you'd think that companies would want to make it easy to get hold of their TV adverts electronically, but nobody seems to think of it. While many companies do make their TV adverts available for download from their websites, I'm not aware of many in ZA that do. There have been many excellent local ads that I'd love to keep a copy of - both for posterity and to share with friends overseas. I'm always adding to my stash of adverts on my PC, but these ads are almost exclusively non-South African. It's a real pity.

Two heavily surreal ads recently have been MTN's "10 years of cellular freedom" advert with the freaky-looking dude in the freaky city with the freaky music and the messenger pigeons and chickens and whatnot, eventually rugby-tackling a news reporter to get onto TV, trying to get hold of his wife "Rice or potatoes?" Another has been the All Gold Tomato Sauce advert, with the cheesy 70's platteland factory vibe and the dweeby chap who says 'thirty-sixssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhh' ... 'Aaah love the way you say that (mah boy), ah hev jus thuh job for yoo'. (Punchline being 36 tomotoes in every bottle, but words can't do the advert justice). I can't imagine anyone other than South Africans finding it stupidly hilarious, but it had Ronwen and I in stitches the first time we saw it.

So wake up, companies! Mail systems across the country are bursting at the seams spreading jokes and movies between bored office workers, many of whom would be sending your adverts around if they were easy to come by! Considering how much a good TV ad must cost to produce (and air), how much more could it cost to sling it up on a website? Having spent that much money on an advert, and with more and more people spending time away from traditional advert-riddled TV, and spending time surfing the Net (or living on pay-channels like DSTV) instead, I'd think that any additional ways to enable and encourage people to see one's adverts would be worth a try.