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Advertising Forums South Africa

Patronising Holcim Ad

A real squirming-with-shame ad in which the sum total of a young man's ambition seems to be laying bricks with Holcim cement.

We see a boy growing up dreaming of becoming a builder - making wonderful sandcastles and card houses, then discovering Holcim cement when he grows up to be a bricklayer. The climactic moment is when we're shown a lovely, spacious home which we're given to understand he has somehow built for himself on a bricklayer's wage.

Two things bother me about this ad - it's highly patronising to suggest that this [Coloured] boy can only aspire to be a bricklayer [I was expecting to see him become an architect or the like], and also it's in very bad taste that the boy changes skin colour noticeably as he grows - the feeling being that any series of Coloured guys will do even if they look nothing alike. Ugh.




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