It’s not every day that a plumbing company collaborates with some of South Africa’s top comedians to promote geyser heating elements, but as we saw with COVID, anything is possible.
Also read: Watch: Trevor Noah and Roger Federer step onto wrong train for Swiss ad
A few years ago, the XTEND Elements team invented a revolutionary design for a geyser heating element that saves users up to 1000 units of electricity per year.
‘After three years of development, certification, lab and field testing and installing thousands of XTEND elements, disaster struck: COVID,’ said XTEND investor and CEO Andrew Koch. ‘Our supply chain and manufacturing processing in China were hit by lockdowns, loadshedding (not only a South African problem) and supply chain issues. We had no stock for six months.’
During his son’s school campout, another director, Richard Pickering, found himself chatting with local comedian and celebrity Stuart Taylor. The comedian explained that COVID had also had a devastating effect on the comedy circuit, and the two men decided to work together.
Over a lager, they discussed how they could work together, have a laugh and get their livelihoods back in order.
‘It was synchronicity, such a wonderful word, and an even better life experience, and we were flattered that Stuart wanted to work with us,’ said Richard.
Alan Grove, an old university friend who is now a London-based advertising executive, wrote their first video script.
‘When he warned that “this must be done by professionals”, we weren’t worried even though our budget was laughable, as, with Stuart, we knew we had the best,’ said Richard.
Stuart called in top SA comedy talent Rob Van Vuuren and Kenwyn Davids to star and Grant Atkinson to edit the new collaboration they called ‘Willie and Dan Stick it to the Man.’
They filmed three hilarious skits about saving money by using energy-saving XTEND elements to mitigate the serious cost of living crisis.
‘After all, South Africans are very good at laughing in the face of crisis,’ said Stuart.
‘We did the joke about “sticking it to the man” because XTEND draws less power and uses less energy, two to three fewer units per day for an average family. If you use XTEND with solar panels or batteries, it will make your system even more efficient and your home more self-reliant. The more geysers you use with XTEND elements, the more the positive impact multiplies,’ Rob explained.
‘This happened during a time when people wanted to help each other not for the “big bucks,” but to uplift people through collaborating,’ said Stuart.
He added, ‘During the pandemic, my mantra was “collaboration is key.” We worked together to create something cool and fun, and they saw the value in it. It was a novel and fun way to market this great product.’
‘As a country, we face serious challenges and need high-quality solutions to address them. We are proud that XTEND is one of these solutions, and it is exciting to help address these serious issues in a light-hearted way,’ he added, with which Richard concurred wholeheartedly.
‘These videos are spot-on South African humour. As XTEND grows, so too will our support of SA comedy. If you do the math, customers install XTEND and pay Eskom less, so these videos are brought to you by Eskom,’ he joked.
Watch Willie and Dan Stick It to the Man here.
Also read:
WC government is ready for winter but loadshedding will hamper efforts
Picture: Supplied