Brand South Africa hits Germany
22 June 2006
South Africa will be visible at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, despite of the fact that Bafana Bafana is not playing at the mega-event.
On Wednesday, the International Marketing Council of South Africa unveiled the cutting edge technology that is being used to market the country during the month long event. The message to the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans who have converged on Germany is that South Africa is open for trade, investment and tourism and has the capacity to successfully host the 2010 World Cup.
Johnston said that the IMC did not view the World Cup as just a sporting event, but that it was "a remarkable opportunity to market the country."
Speaking at the media briefing, CEO Yvonne Johnston noted that the IMC’s use of cutting edge technology, which has largely been invented and developed locally, "shows the world that South Africa is capable of inventing and hosting the best technology in the world."
High-resolution visuals
It also means that South Africa will, almost literally, be all over Frankfurt International Airport, ensuring up to 4 million people have the opportunity of being exposed to South African advertising messages throughout the airport.
South Africa adverts feature in two "vision walls" - sets of nine plasma television screens combined in checkerboard fashion - in high-traffic areas in the airport; in scrolling "citylight" posters at the entrances and exits of both the airport's terminals; and in massive "column wraps" at drop-off zones outside the terminals.
Two Holografx machines, which project the IMC’s adverts as eye-catching three dimensional images a metre in the air. It’s the first time that this technology, which was developed in South Africa, will be used in Europe.
The device projects a three-dimensional image through a laser lens to a metre and a half away from the screen.
The unexpectedness of this
marketing strategy is creating a novelty factor at the airport as people try to "catch" the images from the air, explained inventor Brian Steinhobel.
"Photographs don't do justice to the technology, because a picture is one-dimensional," says Monde Keebine, global marketing manager for the International Marketing Council of SA.
"The effect has to be seen to be believed. It's creating a novelty factor at the airport as people try to catch the image of our advertising floating on air."
World Cup hub
"Our technologically advanced marketing means that every visitor to Frankfurt International will know that South Africa is Alive with Possibility," said Johnston.
Frankfurt Airport is Europe's third-busiest, ranking only behind London Heathrow and Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport in passenger numbers. Around World Cup time, it will become one of the busiest in the world.
According to Frankfurt Airport company Fraport AG, the
airport served 4.39-million travellers in April and is expecting around 450 000 additional passengers during the coming World Cup weeks.
"More than 560 extra flights have been registered, including 300 flights to be operated with medium-sized and widebody aircraft," Fraport AG said in a statement on Friday.
The arrival of seven national teams - Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia - via Frankfurt underscores the airport's central role in Germany 2006.
Working hard
SA Tourism is also playing an integral part in the drive to put South Africa on the map during the 2006 World Cup.
"We are using Germany to show that South Africa will do as well in 2010."
For us, the World Cup is not just a once-off opportunity. We are going to be working hard up to and beyond 2010 to boost tourism as one of the major drivers of our economy as recognised by the government in its Accelerated and Shared Growth
Initiative ASGI-SA, to create jobs for the benefit of all South Africans”, said Moeketsi Mosola, CEO of SA Tourism.
southafrica.info reporter
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