A campaign to raise awareness about safe driving launched this week has caused outrage.
Artist and TV personality Nomuzi Mabena partnered with #DriveDry to promote safe driving but the campaign has since received backlash.
It’s topped Twitter’s trending list and garnered over 12,000 tweets.
The hashtags #RoastNomuzi and #Nomuzi have now spun the conversation into an entirely different trajectory.
Mabena, the campaign’s spokesperson Lebogang Mashigo and head of digital marketing at Katso Media, Dimakatso Lukhele said they were glad to see the engagement the campaign received.
“Our intent was not to cause any harm. The main thing is we want to reduce road fatalities,” Mashigo stated.
In response to a question asking why the campaign gave the impression that Nomuzi was harmed, Mabena said, “people were affected for 12 hours, there are people out there that have been affected by this for a lifetime.”
The campaign began long before anybody noticed. Watch the full story. Pledge to stop drinking and driving in 2019 with #VWDriveDry. pic.twitter.com/VXf2dV3LGg
— #SpiritOfAnOG đđŸđ« (@nomoozlie) January 11, 2019
In my short stint in advertising, one of the rules of disturbing Ad/Campaign is you warn sensitive viewers of the content they are about to view, you also use the end board to declare that nobody was harmed & the logo for the said campaign. What #VWDriveDry did, broke that rule.
— Portia Gumede (@portiagumedesa) January 11, 2019
Source: eNCA
