While waiting around at the hospital recently – to get admitted, to get scanned and finally, to get operated on – I had quite a bit of precious time to consider how easily one wastes it.

Lying in the ward, waiting, I could scroll through social media and I saw, once again, the clever new ad for Naked Insurance.

It’s a clever play on words: a “wait loss” programme, which Naked guarantees will eliminate the long tedious waits you encounter with other insurers. 

There is an app-based system where you do everything on your portable screen and get, they promise, an instant response.

So, you lose wait. 

It’s a clever concept and speaks to millions of South Africans who have squandered years of their lives in queues in banks, at Home Affairs or even holding on to the phone (Oops, I just re-lived my Telkom nightmare from the early 2000s).

Insurance is a grudge purchase and if you’re selling it, you shouldn’t make your customer’s life any more difficult and irritating than it already is by wasting their time.

Naked enlisted Bok front-row forward Ox Nche as the face of the campaign and it worked because you can well believe Ox when he talks about struggling to “lose weight/wait”. 

What didn’t work for me, though, was the placing of one newspaper execution as an advertorial in the Sunday Times. 

Although it was clear on the inside page that the story about Ox was an advertising piece, the journos at the paper decided to “plug” it on page one, without any disclaimer. 

Slippery slope there, people, the one which eventually leads to “how the hell can we believe you” among your readers.

Overall, though, Naked’s concept is clever and it works. 

Just to check that, I went on to hellopeter.com and found more than 3,500 five-star ratings for the company, compared with 400-odd one-stars. 

Plenty of happy customers, it seems.

Orchid to Naked insurance.

A waste of taxpayer funds

I certainly hope the incoming Government of National Unity clamps down on state-owned enterprises’ blatant waste of taxpayer money on vanity marketing projects.

The latest appeared in print and was placed by the Coega Development Corporation from the Eastern Cape, congratulating the outgoing chairman of its board, Batandwa Damoyi, on her appointment to the Public Investment Corporation, the body which manages the pensions of millions of serving and retired civil servants.

After praising Damoyi for the role she played in providing “oversight in the improvement of Coega’s financial controls”, it continued that “it is for this reason that Ms Damoyi has regrettably decided to resign”. 

What? She resigned because she was sorting things out?

If you are going to waste taxpayer money, then at least get someone who can write and who has a smattering of logic. 

Naked's tongue-in-cheek Lose Wait showcases modern insurance

10 Jun 2024

The fact that this drivel made it into print makes me wonder about the overall competence of the entire organisation.

And I am not the only one.

DispatchLive lamented earlier this year about the myriad of development agencies in the Eastern Cape: “With all these agencies that share provincial, regional and municipal development goals, this province should be overflowing with thriving funded entrepreneurs and agricultural, tourism, industrial and other projects.

“It is not. Instead, we are treated to repeated news of failed projects, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, corrupt beneficiaries and a lack of oversight on funded projects.”

Coega Development Corporation you get a smelly Onion for incompetent communication and further wasting of taxpayer money.