Tag Archives: vuvuzela

Bertus Basson at Spice Route : a modern South African restaurant!

Bertus Basson at SR Interior doilies Whale CottageI received a personal invitation from Chef Bertus Basson to join him for lunch at his new Bertus Basson at Spice Route restaurant, which opened on the Paarl wine farm 6 weeks ago. He and his charming wife Mareli managed to re-invent the restaurant within five days from taking over the space, modernising it to reflect their promise of ‘A Modern South African Restaurant’, both in terms of its decor and its food offeringBertus Basson at SR Bertus Whale Cottage.

A lot has changed at Spice Route, my last visit having been when Charles Back had taken over the wine estate, previously called Seidelberg, next door to his Fairview.  I didn’t have time to see all the artisan businesses which have opened at Spice Route since Back took over, but they include a Richard Bosman charcuterie outlet, with tastings at R30 (a bit cheeky I thought), a wine tasting centre, and Cape Brewing Co, about which I Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 24/25 May

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Andrew Bird, Marks & Spencer Head of Trading, which includes wines, non-food, and ambient grocery, is moving to Woolworths for a two year contract as Trading Head next month.  He helped drive Marks & Spencer to be named best retailer at the International Wine Challenge in four out of the past six years.  Bird is said to become head of the ‘wine and soft drinks teams‘ at Woolworths locally.

*   The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) was part of a consortium that completed Terminal 3 at São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, on time and on budget, for the 2014 soccer World Cup, reports The New Age. The project is described as one of the World Cup successes, the new terminal processing all international flights to the city. The capacity to handle an additional 12 million passengers to the 30 million handled annually has been created.   ACSA is also part of a consortium that Continue reading →

‘Safe House’ shot in picture perfect Cape Town, favourite film city of Ryan Reynolds!

The movie ‘Safe House’, starring Denzil Washington and Ryan Reynolds, which was released internationally yesterday, does Cape Town proud, with most of the scenes in the two-hour film shot in the city over a five month period last year.  Reynolds has expressed his love for the city in interviews, an excellent ambassador for Cape Town.

The Weekend Argus reports that Rio de Janeiro was the preferred location for the movie, the script calling for a ‘safe house’ to be as far away as possible from the USA.  Cape Town was chosen above Rio de Janeiro because it ‘had more infrastructure than Rio’, said Reynolds in an interview.

During their time in the city, Reynolds and Washington climbed Lion’s Head, visited the Garden Route, lived in the One&Only Cape Town, and were spotted in numerous local restaurants. Reynolds was blown away by the beauty of Cape Town, and his favourite memory of the city was eating at Mzoli’s.  The trailer and the movie open with a beautiful shot of Lion’s Head in the foreground, across Table Bay, and onto the Paarl mountains covered in southeaster clouds, to audience applause!  Local actress Lynita Crofford stars very briefly in the movie.

The Cape Argus has reported that Reynolds said that Cape Town ‘is my favourite city I’ve shot in’, a fantastic accolade.  He shared that he did not have much time to see the tourist side of the city, but when his family came to visit, it ‘forced me to go see everything as quickly as I could.  I’ve obviously seen all the local sites’. He added that he prefers Cape Town to Johannesburg, where he filmed as well, ‘just because I’m big on the ocean and the hiking and the mountains’.

The movie is dominated by lots of action, a CIA espionage ‘skop-skiet-en-donder’ movie, with more indoor shots than outdoors, thereby limiting the opportunity to show off the beauty of Cape Town. But brand ‘Cape Town’ was pertinently mentioned five times.  An incredible unbelievable car chase was filmed on the Western Boulevard (to the consternation of Capetonians last year, when this road was regularly closed for filming) and at the bottom end of Adderley Street, near the station.  An unidentifiable restaurant (possibly at Lagoon Beach) briefly reflects the fantastic backdrop of Table Mountain to Table Bay; some action takes place at the beautiful-looking Cape Town Stadium, with a night-time soccer match replicated and lots of noisy vuvuzela blowing – at this point Reynolds speaks very acceptable Afrikaans when talking to the local police;  some action takes place on De Waal Drive, an opportunity to show more of the view over Table Bay; a lot of exterior action takes place near the provincial building on Wale Street, another road that was closed on many days for filming; Langa is the location for more action; The ‘Standard Hotel’ in Parow is featured; a ‘safe house’, being a farmhouse on a dusty farm road near Malmesbury, shows off the beauty of the Swartland; wine is drunk, and something about Pinotage is mumbled by Washington as the movie closes, but is not understandable. The building in which a lot of filming was done on Kloof Street, near the Mount Nelson Hotel, is not recognisable in the movie.

Capetonians would be disappointed to see the movie, as there is not much recognisable about Cape Town. As a movie, there is a lot of shooting and some vuvuzela blowing, very noisy due to the surround-sound. For the ladies, Reynolds only looks gorgeous in the close to the movie.  It’s not a movie one would necessarily recommend others to see, and I went to see it yesterday purely to see how the film reflects Cape Town. The movie filming will have been a welcome boost to the city’s financial coffers, benefiting the accommodation, restaurant, and film industries directly.

POSTSCRIPT 14/2: The Cape Times reported yesterday that the movie ‘Chronicle’, which was shot in Cape Town in its entirety and made to resemble Seattle, will be released this week.  The filming of ‘Chronicle’ and ‘Safe House’ jointly is estimated to have generated ‘R350 million in spend to local hotels, restaurants, shops, catering services and transport’, and added to this is the spend on production companies and the Cape Town Film Studios.  Mayoral Committee member for Tourism, Events and Marketing Grant Pascoe said ‘both films showcase the city not only as a premier film location, but as a destination of choice for potential visitors’, thereby indicating that he hasn’t seen either of these two movies!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage

South Africa scores R30 million from online World Cup coverage

The World Cup was an unprecedented success, in terms of its organisation and the tremendous goodwill it caused amongst locals as well as international soccer fans.  In addition, and having a longer lasting effect, is that the above-the-line media as well as social media impact of the World Cup set new records for this event, not just for South Africa, but for the soccer body FIFA too.

 

*   3,2 million soccer fans attended the 32 matches around the country, and about one third of the tickets were bought by about 350000 international visitors – the word-of-mouth feedback to their friends and family is the most credible marketing South Africa could wish for, and is free-of-charge!

*   Highest TV coverage ever was achieved, and reached an unprecedented 700 million viewers for the Final alone 

*   The online coverage was the most dramatic, because much of it was a new way of communicating to soccer fans and about the World Cup, reports the Weekend Argus:

     +   BBC News online ran 120 stories, and the Washington Post 48 stories during the World Cup, both being influential online newspaper services

      +   The FIFA.com website had 150 million unique visitors during the World Cup, three times as many as in 2006. 

       +   South Africa’s unique identity, personality and character was woven into the soccer reporting by the international online media, and so the country’s ability to manage the tournament, and our unique vuvuzela and makarapa became world terms on blog posts, Twitter, comments to blog posts and online articles, and on Facebook.

       +   The value of the online coverage was just short of R30 million, based on 148 million persons communicating about South Africa in the context of the World Cup online, calculated by BrandsEye, a local online agency.   This value was created by soccer fans and the media for free, and did not cost South African Tourism a cent in coverage!

       +   Just more than half of the mentions (58%) about the country came from the USA, a surprisingly small 10% from the UK, and only 8% from South Africa.

       +   The mentions were analysed in terms of degree of positivity, and 55% were “strongly positive”, 40% were factual or neutral in terms of content, and 5% were negative.

       +   Twitter played an important role in spreading the word about South Africa, not only via celebrity (e.g. Paris Hilton has more than 2 million followers) and soccer star Tweets, but also Twitter accounts with huge numbers of followers (e.g. Sports Illustrated, with close to 285000 followers).

In June traffic to the Whale Cottage website almost trebled to 129000 unique visitors, due to the World Cup, but also due to the engagement of Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock, as the blog contains a post about the couple attending a New Year’s party in Fresnaye 18 months ago. 

It has also been reported that the great World Cup coverage for South Africa has raised the bar for the marketing of Brazil.  The 2014 World Cup host country has started its marketing already, by launching an international marketing campaign four years ahead of its tournament, a first in the history of the FIFA World Cup, says Dr Niklaus Eberl, an internal branding consultant for the German and South African World Cups (no doubt for Brazil to come too!).

In Business Day Dr Eberl was reported as saying the the Brazilian tourism agency Ambratur has launched an ambitious marketing strategy, which plans to double the number of tourists to Brazil (to 10 million per year, the same target as that of South Africa) and treble the value of tourism in the next ten years.  The “Brazil is calling you” campaign aims to reach 400 million consumers in 100 countries, with a budget of $30 million this year alone.   Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said: “The success of our African brothers represents a tremendous challenge to the Brazilian people.  We are learning from them to ensure that we will present a World Cup as beautiful as 2010”.   The Brazilian marketing budget is said to make that of South Africa look like “small change”!   Brazil is planning to spend five times the R30 billion of South Africa on its infrastructure.  The country also wants to equal or better South Africa’s 90 % score from FIFA for its handling of the World Cup.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com