The net is home to all sorts of strange people. People like "Fairy Child", who lives and breathes for art and poetry. Of course, like many creative people, she has her vices, too.
Cocaine?
No, speed. But not of the illicit narcotic variety. You see, Fairy Child is into fast cars, Formula One. Wow! That's a pretty evil vice. You can, according to the TV commercial, find Fairy (Faerie?) Child at Polka.co.za.
Clearly Polka is struggling to get people to sign up. How can we know this? Simple - this is the second or third ad style they've gone through in just a couple of years.
First off we had the vignettes of colourful local characters explaining to friends about their new Polka internet connections. They were hilarious. Everybody was talking about them. If they didn't win creative awards they should have. If they didn't sign up customers in droves, it's not surprising. Would anyone looking for an Internet connection really want to associated with these amusing societal misfits? Ah well, at least they made us smile.
Next up was a straight hard sell. Get a Polka connection from R79 per month and some goodies thrown in with it. Trouble is, R79 per month is hardly an earth-shattering offer. The competition easily match, or beat it. So maybe the customers stayed away.
Now we have Fairy Child. Unconvincing and pedestrian. We don't really care about her or her obviously bland existence. Still no reason to sign up.
Polka's real problem doesn't lie with the advertising (although it's not helping). They are a Johnny-come-lately in what is a highly competitive and, possibly, highly over-traded market. If they want customers to switch, they'd better offer some compelling reasons to do so.
Maybe Fairy Child could ask Mikey to set her up with a blog.
