Guess who was the Brand Manager for the Oscars with Oscar campaign when the unimaginable happened on 14 February 2013. A long thread.

But first, I want to send love to everyone involved, especially the friends and family who experienced the unthinkable pain from the tragedy.

In October 2012 I was promoted to brand manager for the launch of 8 M-Net Movie channels, a shift from Movie Magic 1 & 2. What a case study, I'm committed to writing it this year, but that's a whole other thread.

Our then Director had a strong marketing background and actually gave us the creative direction to campaign "Oscars with Oscar".

In December 2012 we recorded a radio ad, shot the print and out of home creative in a studio and finally filmed a TVC with genius director and funny man Bevan Cullinan - yes, M-Net's tooth fairy.

Bevan is unhinged, a characteristic which allows him to see and then recreate the world in a way the rest of us cant. And we're all better for it.

A month prior we'd been sitting in a boardroom and he had pitched the ad to us and it was FUCKING HYSTERICAL. Say what you want retrospectively but at the time it was very funny and there was no way we could have known what was going to unfold.

Go watch it

We had Oscar Pistorious coming out of a fucking body bag

He also dropped the line "That idea doesn't have any legs"

But! But!!! Coming back to Bevan, this crazy MF, takes a photo of Oscar's prosthetic legs (which he had replaced with his blades for the last shot) and posts it to Twitter saying "Oscar, can you please stop leaving your shit all over the place"

Anyway, with the entire campaign produced and delivered in early January 2013, I canvas support from the group and get greenlights from everyone until I pitch it to @Luyanda_Peter the then head of marketing at SuperSport

He warned me that using another South African as the focal point of a campaign in "Rest of Africa" would be a mistake. I knew he was right.

We created an entirely new campaign, exactly the same but without Oscar Pistorious. Just "The Oscars". Radio, TV, Out Of Home, Digital, Print.

BTW, Emily was born in the middle of this. Photo from 20 January 2013 (one week old)

I was also dealing with Women24 who had taken exception to a "self-defence" advert which had been made with women in lingerie BUT WOMEN24 HAD POSTED A VIDEO OF WOMEN DOING A RUGBY SCRUM IN LINGERIE ON THEIR LANDING PAGE

Anyway, that all fell away on 14 February 2013 when my boss called me to say "turn on the news". It was true, Reeva was dead and Oscar had killed her. What a tragedy

By 10:00am the CEO, Directors and Heads of Marketing, Publicity & Corporate Comms emerged from Siyabonana, Magic Centres' Premiere boardroom with 2 instructions;

1. Send a press release out immediately and make a statement across our platforms that in respect of everyone related to the heartbreaking tragedy that we would remove all Oscar P related material with immediate effect

2. My part, Actually remove ALL Oscar P material. But here comes the kicker...

I HAD AN ENTIRE CAMPAIGN WITHOUT OSCAR P IN THE BUILDING!

I replaced every SA TV promo code with the ROA promo code - TV sorted by 11am

We replaced the SA radio ad with the generic - The generic spot was playing out by noon. We printed the out of home Africa billboards and they were installed by 16:00.

Oscars with Oscar was removed and replaced NATIONALLY within 7 hours. Nike hadn't even released a statement by that point.

I was very proud of the empathy the business showed that day as well as its ability to be that dynamic. I learned more in that day about marketing than in my entire undergrad degree. Thanks for coming to my thread talk.