Podcast Series: Guide To Survival

Brutal Fruit is a celebrated alcoholic brand across South Africa and Africa in full support of creatives, especially in the digital space. For years Brutal Fruit has allocated big budgets to ensure the livelihood of digital content creators. Brutal Fruit is a well-known alcoholic brand in South Africa that strongly supports creatives, particularly those working in the digital space. For years, Brutal Fruit has spent large sums of money to ensure the livelihood of digital content creators in the media industry by collaborating with aligned influencers, magazines, and others to create content that promotes their products. Having said that, Brutal Fruit has collaborated with Previdar to produce sponsored covers over the years without ever paying Lawrence Manyapelo, the magazine’s founder who is well-known for hus creatuve work in the fashion and pop culture spaces. With that said, Brutal Fruit has collaborated with Previdar (Lawrence Manyapelo) to produce sponsored Brutal Fruit covers over the years without paying Lawrence Manyapelo at all, the founder of the magazine which is well-known in the fashion and pop culture spaces.

Brutal Fruit Ginkgowood Previdar Cover in collaboration with Boity

With the launch of Gingkowood variant, Brutal Fruit hired South African HipHop artist, actor, and social media influencer Boitumelo Thulo to collaborate with the magazine Previdar and did not pay the magazine’s founder for preproduction, production, post-production, and actual placement of the campaign, which was placed and promoted on the magazine’s cover. Most standard Previdar cover budgets approved from any brand were estimated to be +R300 000.00 on average. According to the employee who worked for the agency managing the campaign, she was paid R90 000.00 to appear on the cover of the magazine for this campaign, Brutal Fruit Gingkowood featuring Boity, while the founder and editor of the magazine was paid nothing.  The brief called for Brutal Fruit alcoholic product branding on almost all editorial images, as well as narrating the editorial story in a way that promotes the Brital Fruit brand and its Gingkowood variant.

Brutal Fruit Previdar Cover in collaboration with Nadia Nakai, DJ Lamiez, Mihlali, Tshepi Vundla, K-Naomi and Takkies.

With their launch of their Cranberry-Rose variant, Brutal Fruit placed 6 cover stars on the cover of Previdar and ran adverts taking over the whole website of the magazine – the cover featured South African media personality and presenter K-Naomi, the renowed dancer Takkies who now lives in the UK, model and social media influencer Tshepi Vundla, Africa’s renowed Hip Hop artist Nadia Nakai, Make-up artist and social media influencer Mihlali and renowed African DJ Lamiez. Each celebrity who appeared in the magazine had their own cover story tailored to the Brutal Frui Cranberry-Rose story. Brutal Fruit did not pay Previdar (Lawrence Manyapelo) to work with the magazine on the campaign’s preproduction, production, post-production, and actual placement in the magazine. The Brutal Fruit Cranberry-Rose product was featured in editorial images, and the brand’s logo appeared in almost every part of the story, ads, and on the magazine’s cover. The approved Brutal Fruit Previdar cover budget was +R300 000.00 because each cover star had to be compensated and the production of the covers heavty in terms of execution. Previdar was still paid nothing for this campaign and there was a lot effort put into silencing after raising concerns.

The main goal of this article is to inform you as a creative to constantly seek alternative ways when challenged on your finances to ensure that your creative resources are not being exploited by finding methods to ensure that you are getting paid while maintaining relationships with those managing your finances or leaving them entirely.. As a digital content creator, your goal should be to ensure that those you work with have your best interests at heart, especially when it comes to your financial well-being, and to always be on the lookout for red flags. Just because the brand in question is an established popular brand does not mean you will be compensated for some of the creative work you may be producing for them in order to promote their campaigns on the platform you own with public influence.

Camp here, more stories of exploitation of creative resources like this one by Flying Fish, Vodacom, Vodacom Deezer, and Rimmel London can be found here. Listen to the Guide To Survival podcasts on Vidar.Africa for more useful audio content like this one. Thank you for your time.