Recently, a YouTube video of a uniquely South African “news” item did the rounds on the interwebs. The video in question purported to show footage of a tokoloshe, and the man who it was terrorizing.  As we suspected last week, the story turned out to be a cleverly constructed, and impressively produced advertising segment. Which is why it makes the cut for today’s Radvertising slot, which we’ll be bringing to you throughout the rest of the week in the run up to the 2012 installment of the Loeries.

Mike Sharman, Big Kahuna over at Retroviral gave us the skinny:

The Last week Monday a news item was seeded to Wat Kyk Jy and Life is Savage as part of a teaser campaign.

To create maximum believability and buy-in of the original teaser video [above], the agency created a news story. It filmed cell phone footage, a news report, and the news reader in studio, screened that material on a TV and filmed the “broadcast” off another cellphone, including PVR watermarks.

These finer details were included to ensure no one questioned the legitimacy of the news story and focused on the Tokoloshe instead. Just shy of 60 000 organic views later and 117 likes, public interest had been created.

It was important to take ownership of the content for the brand to benefit from the online talkability. Yesterday, SA’s property oracle officially launched. Introducing Tivvit.com and this set of online ads.

The agency says the ad campaign is intended to be fun. Based on scenarios of why people would want to move, they have aimed to create a positioning that they can now own.

There are endless hilarious, scary, bizarre and ridiculous reasons why someone would need to move house and these are just the first of many ads depicting some of them. The message is also incredibly simple, “when you really need to find a new place, visit Tivvit.com”.

Look out for this campaign at the Loerie Awards next year.

A shorterned version of the Tokoloshe news story with a branded ending

Here are the rest of the adverts:

Credits go to the agency, Halo, production company, Team Best, and seeding to Retroviral.