14 theses on Trevor Noah

1.His self-serving semantics. On shilling for Cel C. "I get paid, but I don’t sell out. I don’t work for them – I work with them."

2. His employers. Cell C is a company with dubious beginnings and controversial corporate masters. The lucrative third cell license was undergoing an ‘independent’ selection process in the late 90s. But the ANC had already "promised (the license) to the Saudis long ago as part of a wider package of weapons for oil deals". Cell C is 75% owned by Oger Telecom of Dubai. Oger itself was built by Rafik Hariri, who was charged with fraud and corruption, and ultimately killed with a car bomb in Beirut.

3. His "ethnic ambiguity". It works for companies hungry for an emerging youth demographic ‘beyond race’. Noah joked on his show recently about being "cappuccino". The ‘aspirational’ mall-going multi-cultural crowd is the target of lifestyle-companies and Noah’s right in their arc.

4. His suits. There are many great suits in Comedy. Chaplin’s tramp suit. Groucho’s tuxedo. And Steve Martin, as Flydini, the magician. But Noah’s suits communicate little more than social mobility – an I’ve arrived professionalism. The equivalent of a wine cellar or Italian tiles.

5. His indifference. "Some people have tried calling me to complain about me working with Cell C – I couldn’t hear them though, the call kept cutting."

6. His audience betrayal. Trevor Noah pretended to be Chomsky in his corporatescripted rant about cellphones when he was really on the side of the side he’s criticizing.

7. His dimples. Dane Cook has dimples. And he also sucks. He and Noah are both too pretty to be funny. They don’t need to be funny to get laid. Ugly comics do. Belushi needed the funny to get laid. Jackie Gleason. Don Rickles. Whoopi. Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison, Louis CK, Patton Oswalt, David Cross. Needing the funny to get laid separates okay comedians from legends.

8. His overexposure. When your name makes people make the stepped-in-something face – it’s time to slow down. Being everywhere all the time just shines a light on the mediocrity of local marketing. It has nothing to do with talent.

9. His clean-cut image. Where are Noah’s addictions? His flaws and excesses? Welladjusted is comedy poison. Doug Stanhope endlessly drinks beer onstage and sleeps with angry transsexual hookers. Dylan Moran chain-smokes with endless glasses of red wine. Richard Pryor got so high he set himself on fire. Literally. Then joked about it.

10. His complicity in marketing gumph. Here’s the real Cell C CEO, Lars, on that ©: "The C in the centre is based on our vision of understanding the way of life of our customers better (C is for customer) and tailing solutions around them (indicated by the ring). And there’s no significance in the Cell C logo bearing a resemblance to the copyright symbol". Copyright issues are at the center of web 2.0 culture. Intellectual property is a battleground. The company has already leveraged the integrity of a promising comedian. What’s next?

11. His silence on the truth. Cell C spent R150m rebranding and a further R150m on upgrading stores. It made R1.4 billion in 2009. Vodacom spends around R440m on advertising and MTN R470m. All of it deflects the fact that South Africans pay some of the highest cellphone call rates in the world.

12. His silence on debt. Cell C has a lot of it. More than R13bn until recently. It’s debt to earnings ratio is very high. The company halved its debt through a massive debt-forequity swap agreed to by shareholders. In other words, the whole re-branding song and dance is simply proving to shareholders their money’s safe. There are multiple perceptions being serviced here. Noah is not only talking to us, the local SA consumer, but Saudi Arabian capital. The persona he’s selling, hip, opinionated, well groomed, has something of the glib young prince about it. Now we know why.

13. His accents. An accent in comedy is really just saying don’t listen to the content of the joke, listen to the way I’m telling it. Noah’s over-insistence on accents, rather than good material, ironically parallels the smoke and mirrors of the Cell C campaign. Noah’s method as a comedian is the same as the cynical bluff his bosses pulled! All show and no substance.

14. His tarnished image. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Cell C’s use of the 4Gs logo and found its networking speed and service to be "on par" with competitors. The company was essentially branding a competitive advantage it "did not possess". Cell C tried to sell us the illusion of ‘greater speed’ and ‘greater service’. The well-paid purveyor of that lie was Trevor Noah.

by: Brandon Edmonds

Sourced form the good people at http://www.enjin.co.za