
22 May 2014
“You’re never too young to know the whole story”, Cape Town-based digital marketing agency Quirk says at the end of a YouTube video backing its campaign for Lego to create a special set of its interlocking plastic brick toys to honour the “Legocy” of Nelson Mandela.
Quirk’s video is one of three finalists in YouTube Film Hack, a Google-sponsored competition for South African video content creators to produce inspiring YouTube marketing content based on Mandela’s legacy. The Nelson Mandela Foundation made the three videos public on Thursday.
The one-minute, forty-two second clip “Madiba: our country’s greatest story told in Lego” uses Lego figures to follow Mandela’s journey from the Pass Law protests of 1960 through the subsequent Rivonia Trial and imprisonment on Robben Island to freedom and ultimate reconciliation for South Africa as a whole.
The soundtrack to the clip is a recording of the famous excerpt from Mandela’s Rivonia Trial speech, in which he declared that he was prepared to die for a free South Africa.
“This is our country’s greatest story,” Quirk declares in a note posted below the video. “Let’s never stop telling it. Help us keep Madiba’s legacy alive to children of all ages. Add your name to our request to Lego for the creation of an official ‘Madiba: Freedom Fighter’ set. Go to www.legocy.co.za and share an icon with the world.”
The same message appears in shortened form at the end of the video, adding that Quirk will be handing its request to Lego on 5 December 2014.
The innovative campaign bears out Quirk’s slogan – “brave curious minds” – and gives further indication why the South African agency was targeted for takeover by London-based communications conglomerate WPP, which acquired a controlling stake in Quirk earlier this month.
SAinfo reporter