This is an ad campaign created for The History Channel by their advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, in particular for the South African market. The interesting things about this campaign is that it has garnered much reaction from people around the world deeming it as “anti-American” and “offensive”.

The slogan on the top corner, however, makes me think of a bigger overall issue that plagues the world and that is that “History is Written by Winners”. I find it ironic that a television channel that is a joint venture between NBC, Disney/ABC and The Hearst Corporation to be the ones that put up such a slogan, with these particular ‘facts’ as support, on their channel campaign. Pardon me for being so skeptical of corporate infotainment, but historiographically speaking, I, for one, would consider the History Channel to be one of the hegemonic agents of interpretation of the history that is communicated to the masses. And furthermore, why is it that Ogilvy decided this would be a good campaign for South Africa, and not for the US or even any other broader market?  Is there an articulation here that would be more attractive to the South African, or non-American market?

This campaign was also deemed “though provoking”; I would agree, saying definitely peculiarly so.  But I guess I’m not so sure where the peculiarity of it lies in particular: the producers of it, its intended audience or the actual content.

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