By Bev Hermanson

I’m sitting here with a pile of Springbok Rugby Player cards, called COLLECTABOKS. They’re part of a PR campaign that ties in with Pick n Pay’s sponsorship of our Springbok rugby team.

The COLLECTABOKS are very impressive, and judging by all the hype, the campaign should be a winner.

These high quality cards have gold-foiled embossing on the front, above and below the photo of a Springbok player. On the back, there’s a QR code that directs you to a Pick n Pay website where there’s more information about the COLLECTABOKS campaign, how it works and the prizes that can be won.

There’s also a unique serial number – and each card has a different one, even if it’s for the same person. We know this because, amongst the 33 cards that we’ve received so far, we have 9 cards of Rassie Erasmus, 7 of Bongi Mbonambi and 7 of Aphele Fassi, as well as a few of some of the other players.

Many of the COLLECTABOKS enthusiasts have expressed their disappointment in not having the variety they had expected. However, the thing that has been a greater disappointment for my avid rugby-supporter family is how each player has been rated. The scores just don’t make any sense at all.

Amongst our collection, there are four COLLECTABOKS cards claiming that the player has never scored any tries.

• Ox Nche – zero points – zero tries
• Ruan Nortjé – zero points – zero tries
• André Esterhuizen – zero points – zero tries
• Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu – 52 points (conversions and penalties) – zero tries.

Apart from the fact that the last two are incorrect, many rugby fans are asking what do those points even mean? Have they been AI-generated? Did the AI not understand the brief, so it just put a zero?

Why does André Esterhuizen look like he’s a nobody when in fact he scored a try against Australia in August and another try against New Zealand in September? According to Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s COLLECTABOKS card, he has never scored a try for the Springboks. Yet, we all know that, in September, he broke the record for scoring the most points in a single Springbok test match and that included scoring three tries.

Never mind the chaos that’s going to ensue on the 1^st, 15^th and 22^nd of November when customers mill around at the stores trying to swop their cards. What value do these cards really have when the information was incorrect in the first place?

What went wrong?

When you walk around a Pick n Pay store, if you look closely at the packaging, you’ll be able to see just how intricate some of it is. Silver foiling on a toothpaste box, a textured finish on a box of biscuits, a glossy UV finish on a box of hair dye. Makes sense to add that same kind of glamour to collector cards.

The concept was brilliant but this is an example of how not thinking everything through when planning a campaign can end in chaos.

Because, print is static. A rugby player’s performance on the field is not. Taking the risk months in advance of detailing how many points each player has scored can only be a recipe for disaster.

In addition, having to gold foil and emboss the front of each card, as well as having to print a unique serial number on the back can be super-labour intensive.

Which begs the question – is that why they ended up having to print in China?

#PnP
#Springboks
#SpringbokRugby
#PnPCOLLECTABOKS