South Africa Special: Joe Public

With such stunts as staging a UFO crash to promote a futuristic energy drink, agency Joe Public is proving that the galaxy is the limit when it comes to its creativity. As CCO Pepe Marais and ECD Xolisa Dyeshana reveal, they have several mission statements, along with doing ‘epic work’, they aim to inspire social change, celebrate diversity and turn their bronze Lions into gold

Liberty can be a very hard-won thing. Just ask Pepe Marais, co-founder and CCO of South Africa’s biggest independent advertising group, Joe Public. In the agency’s Jo’burg office hangs a glass box containing a pen, a Champagne cork and a contract, dated 26 January 2009 with the words ‘Never ever sell your soul’ scrawled on it. It’s a daily reminder of Joe Public’s turbulent fortunes, which have risen and dipped like a dodgy soufflé since 1998, when Marais and partner Gareth Leck first opened the agency.

Following early success with the (then) revolutionary concept of ‘takeaway advertising’ [low cost, more accessible work], the business was sold to DraftFCB, but the partnership wasn’t a prosperous one for Joe Public. In 2006, things went from bad to worse: their biggest client left, rendering the agency practically bankrupt. The silver lining? Share values plummeted, allowing Leck and Marais to buy back Joe Public and restart with a handful of staff. “It’s quite a business to get yourself back from an international holding company,” concludes Marais ruefully. Hence the ‘shrine’.

Since its rebirth in 2009, the agency’s rise has been meteoric. Joe Public Jo’burg’s staff has grown to 200, while the group now encompasses a brand design agency, a PR agency and a business activation agency, plus offices in Cape Town, Namibia and Amsterdam. Its roster of top clients includes Nedbank, Nike and burger chain Steers. 

When shots meets Marais and his charismatic ECD, Xolisa Dyeshana, it’s the hectic pre-Christmas period and the pair are “in the trenches”, but brimming over with enthusiasm for their latest project – an integrated experiential campaign for food and beverage giant FutureLife, which launched the previous day.

Having teased consumers on Twitter with hoax UFO sightings, Joe Public engineered a ‘spaceship crash’ in central Johannesburg: as officials in hazmat suits examined the smoking wreck, they revealed boxes of a new, futuristic drink. Social media went wild.  

The stunt rounds off a successful year for the agency, which picked up a slew of Loeries and three bronze Lions in Outdoor, Promo & Activation, and Film. The latter, for Dialdirect’s The Notebook ended a bit of a drought for South Africa in film, with a Greg Gray-directed tear-jerker about a little boy who does all the chores so that his harried mum can attend his school play.  

Chasing Lions with local relevance

Marais and Dyeshana want to turn those bronzes into golds. “We have huge growth potential, we want to do epic work,” says Marais. “We really feel that we’re at the beginning of our decade. We’ve been focusing on local awards for many years, but now we’re starting to shift our focus to Cannes.” With three ‘equivalent calibre’ spots lined up for 2016, Marais says film is the agency’s best hope for global success. That’s not to sideline the use of new media, which “have caught up with us quicker than many anticipated”, says Dyeshana, quoting the success of the FutureLife campaign. 

Of course, there’s a danger in chasing Lions: the work risks becoming Eurocentric. Dyeshana insists though that “local relevance is something [Joe Public] will strive to keep because it’s the soul of our work… the balance is always to keep it real for our market first.” Having been recently named chairman of the Creative Circle, the body dedicated to improving South African advertising’s creative standards, developing a “proudly South African aesthetic” is an issue close to Dyeshana’s heart.

“From a [local] awards point of view, you have to ask yourself have we promoted that kind of work, have we put structures in place to recognise it? And we haven’t,” he concludes. However, he is hopeful that “going forward, we’ll start seeing work that is a lot more celebratory of our different South African cultures and our combined South African culture as well – whatever that looks like.”

Local flavour is important, but the agency is also committed to “finding a higher meaning” in its work, says Marais, referencing a recent anti-underage drinking campaign, Be The Mentor, for the country’s top beer brand, SAB. “We found an angle that’s more inspiring than just ‘drink beer’, and if we pick up more liquor business in the future, we’d probably use the opportunity to make important statements.” It’s all part of Joe Public’s mandate to inspire social change.

“We talk about ‘an ecosystem of growth’, because we believe in the growth of our clients, which feeds the growth of our people, which feeds the growth of our country,” explains Dyeshana. “South Africa has so many social challenges because of its past: businesses exist as part of a community and we all have a contribution to make.”  

One such contribution has been the Loeries Effectiveness-winning CSR programme, One School At A Time, working with underprivileged schools in the Jo’burg townships of Soweto and Diepsloot. “The school system feeds an economy with huge growth potential; so fix education and you fix the economy,” says Marais.

Many of the agency’s staff come from underprivileged schools, so “people are inspired by the fact that not only are we catering for ourselves as Joe Public but also for their wellbeing, and the country as a whole,” adds Dyeshana.

Looking to the future, the self-billed ‘creative partners in crime’ are feeling “very optimistic” about the industry’s prospects, and South Africa as a whole. “There are huge things that not everyone agrees on, but that’s the stuff that creates the next big wave of change,” concludes Marais. “The country is in turmoil, but what better place is there to be now?”