Cerelac: It’s no good, Mum

Almost thirty years ago, when we lived in South Africa, one of my favourite sources of entertainment were TV commercials. Some were so well-acted and vocalised that they’d leave you thinking you’d just watched an interesting mini-drama.

I wasn’t surprised when, going through a newspaper one day, I saw that the TV adverts were actually rated at the end of the year.

I, therefore, read what was rated the best commercial on TV as well as the one rated the worst. Surprisingly, the one rated the worst was one of my favourites and the reason it was voted the worst is the same reason it might win millions of upvotes in some parts of Nigeria.

But I’ll get back to that shortly.

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Meanwhile, I’m writing today’s piece just to say that I wish we have such an advert rating agency/publication in this country, so I can suggest to them the worst TV commercial in Nigeria.

For more than a year, I think, I’ve been suffering the misfortune of watching the latest Cerelac advert on TV.

Everything about that commercial irritates me, and even my children now know that when it’s shown, I’d reach for the remote control, so they quickly hand it over to me or simply change the channel.

As someone who has grown up on adverts for cereals like Cerelac, Babeena and others, right from 70s to the 80s, I can sum up the procedure as follows:

A mother would be shown displaying the product, then mixing the cereal with boiled or warm water in clean utensils, then lovingly feeding the child till the last spoonful. Afterwards, she hugs or cuddles a happy, well-fed child with all the affection of a mother to her child.

Decades after decades, though the products change, the process by which the product is made attractive to the public is the same.

Until recently, that is. I mean, with Cerelac Junior, the whole affectionate and loving mother concept was replaced by a distant and nervous-looking woman, who looks more like a scared-stiff nanny than the mother of the child in the lead role.

Nowhere is this lady shown preparing the cereal, nor is she shown feeding the child. And though one could argue that this child is not the normal infant baby but a toddler who could feed himself, at least showing her hand the food to the child lovingly, with an encouraging pat on the head can make it more appealing.

But in Cerelac Junior, no one even notices when the food is given to the child; he’s just shown all by himself on the dining seat, eating his cereal.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the mother is shown next sitting not too close to him, neither talking nor touching him, just looking nervously at the boy, as would a new nanny who’s afraid to do anything wrong by the child or his parents.

Then, to cap it all, the advert ends with this non-talking, non-touching, nervous-looking, nanny-type mum smiling broadly at no one as if she’s in a commercial for toothpaste rather than a child’s meal.

And then their voiceover. “Cerelac Junior is so good, Mum.” And I always felt like screaming. “No, it’s not good at all,” because I know that the advert isn’t good at all.

I’ve often wondered which advert agency did such a poorly conceived and acted commercial. It’s such a departure from the interesting and affection-filled mother-child cereal adverts we knew.

And if the advert agency is so out of ideas that it could only produce such a dull commercial that’s so distant from reality, are the owners of Cerelac so clueless that they can’t come up with something better?

Anyway, if I had my way, I’d have that commercial voted the worst TV advert for the year 2023.

Going back to my favourite South African advert which got voted the worst for that year. It was of a pregnant woman who boarded a plane, but once it was airborne, she fell into labour. Luckily for her, with the assistance of some air hostesses, the lady was assisted to deliver her baby safely and without any disruption to the flight.

The commercial ends with the beautiful white woman holding her baby to her chest and affectionately smiling at it.

I loved the advert, which I believe was for an airline that wanted to show it could handle any emergency on board successfully.

Suddenly, it was voted the worst commercial on TV. Not because the model was white, at the time, almost all TV and adverts were done by white South Africans.

It was the beginning of majority rule (1994) and though there was a move towards political correctness by featuring a few black faces in adverts, promos and even beauty pageants, the TV was still very much dominated by white faces.

Before we left Jo’burg in 1995, a second black Miss South Africa had been crowned, the first was in 1994. And even Mr South Africa was a black man for the first time that year.

Chester Williams, the late Rugby player who was coloured but looked more like African, was the face of the Rugby World Cup in 1995. He promoted the tournament on TV and billboards all over the country but sustained an injury during practice and never made it to the actual games.

Anyway, so back to the airline advert that was voted the worst. The writer said it came last because it wasn’t natural at all.

And what made it unnatural? The fact that the woman wasn’t screaming and shouting while delivering the baby. In the commercial, her face was shown, while her whole body was blocked from view by the air hostesses assisting her.

The head that we could see was shown tossing to the right and left, the face contorted in pain, as she pretended to push the child out of her womb. But all that acting wasn’t good enough for the advert regulators of South Africa. To them, giving birth is all about screaming and cursing the one who got a mother into that situation in the first place.

Needless to say, I was shocked to hear the reason my favourite advert “failed”. Here in Northern Nigeria, it is a thing of shame to scream while giving birth. We are actually taught from an early age that childbirth required bravery and great physical effort, but whatever you do, screaming is no-no. During labour, we are given prayers to recite, and the most one does, when a supplication couldn’t stop the pain of a contraction, is to chew your lower lip to suppress the scream.

Over here, to scream at childbirth is to show cowardice. And we had to live up to that. It’s not compulsory but it’s a highly recommended practice.

However, in South Africa, it’s considered unnatural to deliver a child without screaming. Talk about cultural relativism.

So back to Cerelac Junior. It might be ‘all good, mum’ to the advertisers but it isn’t good at all to those of us watching it. It gives mixed messages to the viewer. Instead of a loving mum feeding her child, we are left with a nervous nanny, too afraid to even touch him.