SA Shines Again! It’s a Silver Pencil For Vaseline and VML at the One Show

Vaseline and VML South Africa have taken South African heritage to the international stage once again, this time at The One Show. Vaseline’s much-loved social media post Mntana ka Gogo picked up Silver in the Social Media: Social Post/Single category.

This is the second major international award for the Heritage Day campaign, which went viral in September last year. It also won a bronze and a silver at the Clio Awards last month.

Simple, human, powerful

Since it first went viral across both social media and traditional media last year, the campaign has kept South Africans reminiscing with its visceral portrayal of the caring relationship between caregiver and child. 

It’s that feeling of a real-life moment frozen in time that resonated with audiences even beyond South Africa’s borders – and now, international juries too. 

"The part that still amazes me is that it was signed off in a conversation and shot in 20 minutes, starring the daughter of one of the creatives,” says Nhlanhla Ngcobo, Executive Creative Director at VML South Africa, who led the creative team behind the campaign. “I feel like advertising has become so complicated these days. An idea has to go through so many rounds of approval and by the time it gets signed off, it’s often quite watered down from the original. I think what’s beautiful about this post is that it’s creativity in its purest form – raw and inspired. And it’s so human. There was a lot of trust needed on both the client side and the agency side to make that happen and I’m really grateful to everyone who believed in this idea and allowed it to come to life."

In top company

Widely regarded as one of the most respected honours in advertising and related fields, The One Show has set a global benchmark for creative excellence for over five decades. Produced by The One Club for Creativity, it celebrates bold ideas, powerful storytelling and innovation across the full spectrum of creative disciplines.

Judged by more than 300 industry leaders from around the world, The One Show honours work that rises to the top in an intensely competitive field. With its coveted Pencil recognised as a career-defining symbol of achievement, winning is a significant mark of peer-recognised creative excellence.

A win for powerful storytelling

Vaseline’s Heritage Day campaign shows that powerful storytelling transcends borders. Despite being deeply rooted in South African culture, to the point where the copy was written in vernac, it still touched audiences around the world, proving that human connection is a universal language. And the more honestly local a story is, the more widely it can land.

With AI dominating our devices, it’s also a poignant reminder that excellent craft can be simple and analogue. And that audiences don’t care how big the production was, they care that it made them feel something. 

Read more about Vaseline’s Heritage Day campaign here. 

View all this year’s One Show Awards winners here.