FT: MTN Makes the Right Connection

 
While brands from China, Russia, India and Brazil are now regular features in the BrandZ Top 100, until this year’s ranking an entire continent was missing: Africa.
But given that it is a global ranking, it is fitting that MTN Group, the company behind MTN, the first African brand to appear in the ranking, should have a vision to be the leading telecommunications provider in emerging markets.
The South African company, established only in 1994 as the old apartheid regime was being dismantled, is a mobile operator and internet service provider with operations in 22 countries, mainly across Africa but also in the Middle East (including Syria, Yemen and, controversially, Iran) and Afghanistan.
Jennifer Roberti, MTN’s executive, group marketing, admits to having mixed feelings about the achievement. MTN makes its debut in the Top 100 at 88th, with a brand value of $9.3bn. “On the one hand we’re thrilled, but there is a part of me that feels it’s about time,” she says.
With its multinational presence and more than 170m subscribers, Ms Roberti says she can think of “a lot of western brands that are included in global listings, and receive a lot of attention, that don’t have the same reach and magnitude as MTN”.
Ms Roberti is not alone in believing that – in terms of brands and other respects – Africa’s time has come. Kr Raghu, Unilever’s vice-president for brand building & marketing operations, Africa, talks of three phases for brands there.
In the first, until about the middle of the 20th century, companies such as Unilever were building markets, and big brands became generic terms – so washing powder was called omo and was called blueband.
Then, he says, came a phase, lasting until about 2005, when many big FMCGs (fast-moving consumer goods companies) were trying to fit Africa into their brand, rather than the brand into Africa. Unilever was party to a bit of that thinking, says Mr Raghu.
More recently, though, things have changed and FMCGs are crafting brands for Africa.
“Why is this happening now,” he asks. “First, because GDP growth of 8–12 per cent is very attractive and, secondly, because there is a booming middle class [numbering more than 300m]. But most important is the combination of this economic strength with a growth of an African attitude: Africans are coming out more strongly as being African.”
Shannon Yuill, regional brand director for Guinness Africa (part of Diageo), agrees. “In terms of what Africa is going through, the ‘African awakening’ fits really well to what Guinness is about. The brand celebrates people who realise their potential,” she says.
“At the emotional level the brand’s positioning, and what it stands for, resonates with Africans. It celebrates being bold, true to yourself and having entrepreneurial flair,” she adds.”
Some facets of marketing and brand-building are the same the world over, but others differ from region to region. “Finding the right media and the right billboards is definitely complicated in our environment,” says Ms Roberti. “We don’t have the same kind of metrics that other markets have.”
Building brand awareness is not hard, she says. What is hard is building brand relevance. When it comes to sponsorship, therefore, the aim was to look for properties that have the right fit with MTN’s brand and also with its consumers. In Africa, football fits the bill better than anything else.
Over the years the MTN brand has become ever more associated with Africa’s favourite sport. The company was thinking ahead in 2006, when it became the title sponsor of the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt, where it wasn’t even present at the time.
“We definitely knew that sponsorship should follow the trajectory of our business strategy,” says Ms Roberti.
MTN constantly reviews its involvement in football – whether it be at grass roots level, regional level, or sponsoring a national team. In 2010 it concluded a three-year agreement for broadcast sponsorship of the Barclays premier league across Africa and MTN has a special affinity with Chelsea – crowned European champions last weekend – because of the number of African players on the west London club’s books, such as Michael Essien and Salomon Kalou. The company also keeps its name in front of African football fans via its MTN football website.
The older brands have had longer, of course, to build awareness. Guinness has long been an iconic brand across the continent, says Ms Yuill, and that trait has intensified in recent years. “It’s the kind of brand where you buy the T-shirt and get the tattoo”.
Guinness too, has sponsored football – last year it brought the Argentine team to Nigeria for a match against the national team. “That created a huge amount of interest and the feedback we got was that this is something big and bold that only Guinness can do,” she says.
The huge differences in living standards and conditions across the continent oblige companies such as Unilever to use all sorts of ways to communicate about their brands. Mr Raghu says this could be everything from a wallboard on the road out of Kinshasa to TV advertising that would work on an old black-and-white TV screen in Ethiopia, to live digital streaming aimed at mobile phones (the continent has more mobile phones than the US).
Radio is still very popular, he says, but he predicts explosive growth in the use of mobiles for interactive communication with consumers, as the mobile phone is such a convenient tool that they are now very familiar with.
Unilever has worked with Mpesa, the money transfer tool, on several occasions in connection with promotions for Royco’s (Knorr) range of products, popular in Kenya, and Omo. The company rewarded consumers with both money and airtime using special codes in packs.
In such a diverse continent, it is perhaps surprising that some branding ideas can work well across the region.
Ms Roberti says: “There are times when you think that something is relevant in only one market, [whereas in fact it has more general appeal] than the other way round.”
As an example, MTN South Africa ran its own campaign during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, which was built around the township slang word ayoba “cool”. This became a rallying cry elsewhere and was even picked up by Japanese and South American media, she says.
“Marketing sometimes underestimates the power of the good idea to transfer across borders,” she says.
While MTN has been piloting advertising via mobile phones in some markets, there is also the strength of the distribution network for raising brand awareness, says Ms Roberti – be it a roadside vendor wearing MTN-branded apparel or an MTN umbrella on a kiosk in Ghana or Uganda.
At Guinness, Ms Yuill says that in a continent with so many cultures and languages, “there is certainly a need to ensure you’ve got the right horses for the right courses”.
While the brand has the same positioning across Africa, she says, Guinness wants to ensure that in each country, it does the things, which are relevant to local consumers. But there are some big platforms it has taken across Africa, especially if it is a breakthrough from traditional advertising, for example in new media.
All this talk of new media, mobile telephony and a rising middle class cannot obscure the fact that there is another Africa where hundreds of millions live in need, however. So when it comes to building awareness of a Unilever brand such as Lifebuoy soap, for example, sponsorship of grassroots activities such as a “global hand wash day” in Nigeria, or working with NGOs on projects to improve hygiene and nutrition, are all part of the mix.
“We are very passionate about driving hygiene as a habit-building process,” says Mr Raghu.

Culled from the Financial Times