Monday, December 22, 2008

Festive Greetings from the Pro Ravings Team

Hey everyone,

2008 was a great year for us. The blog was started in August and since then we have had over 800 hits! A big thank you to all our readers.

Our last poll which wanted to know who of you thought the best raver was, ended in a tie. Both Jim Halpert (The Office US version) and Ari Gold (Entourage) both ended up with the same scores. I must say I thought that Ari would have won by a mile, but clearly some of that geeky charm of Jim has rubbed off on some of you.

Its the festive season now and we wanted to wish all of you a merry xmas and a happy new year. We would also just like to remind you that New years is the perfect time to find a raving.

2009 is around the corner, and there will be some big changes on the horizon for pro ravings. Keep reading, keep sending in your ravings and lets get more people in 2009 into the pro raving mindframe!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Adverse advertising

Firstly we all know that some adverts are targeted at specific audiences. Secondly we also know that sometimes a simple English translation sometimes skews the original meaning totally. Some of the funny ones I've heard of are Fu King Chinese Restaurant, Coolpis Juice or the The Good Testes Wine and Dine. I'm sure you can think of many others. I just have to wonder whether the marketing departments of these products or places take into account other possible translations, not only language, of their advertisements.

Our raving starts like this:

Johannesburg is a very diverse and liberal city. So one shouldnt be surprised when one sees transvestites or people of the same sex holding hands. I was walking through a Pick 'n Pay and waiting for Gesh while he was in a queue. I decided to lean on a counter to wait. On the counter there was a fridge with energy drinks. I didn't take notice of the picture on the fridge at first after about 10 minutes I looked at again and was a bit disturbed by what I saw:


Now one has really got to wonder what went through the minds of the marketing team that did this. Are they targeting a niche market ? Did they really intend for a purple man with their products to be standing behind a yellow leper in such an awkward position ? I can honestly say its adverts like these that make me NOT wanna buy the sellers products ! What do guys think ? Am I being too harsh ? Or am I reading into a totally innocent advert and making something out of nothing ? All I 'm saying is that I wanted to stick an R18 sticker on that fridge before I walked out of that store.

-->In the words of Nelson from the Simpsons – Ha Ha<--