Pastel's somewhat failed ads

Street pole ads are despicable. They represent just one more step in the encroachment of corporate propaganda ads into our lives. Next thing you know, corporate lies ads will make their way into the classroom - oh wait, they already do at the fine institution where I lecture.

If my fellow Durbanites can stop being lazy bums who buy what they're told to buy eager buying beavers, this stupid phenomenon can be stopped by the boycotting of evil doers companies who advertise on street poles.

Before I start boycotting visual polluter Pastel, I shall take a minute to discuss their street pole ads.


The first ad is pretty clever. Both Risk and Monopoly are board games and the ad immediately reminds you of those games. This is also the ad's flaw; although Monopoly is possibly quite widely played, I'm not so sure that Risk is. I imagine that board games are specific to certain cultures and South Africa has many cultural groups.


Contrived at best. A spaza shop is a type of informal business in South Africa which developed in townships. Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, etc.) use prefixes like "u" and "isi" in front of nouns (based on the noun class); I'm not sure whether the "e" in front of "Spaza" is meant to be an allusion to this prefixing.

And electronic payroll processing just ain't as glamorous as e-commerce.


I like this ad the most. The pun is simple enough to be understood by most people. Importantly though, "bank rolls" makes me think of reams and reams of paper. I almost (just almost) feel compelled to forgive Pastel for polluting my visual space.