Of Australian Bogans Masquerading As Creatives In Nairobi Agencies

On Valentine’s Day we were treated to a rich but mildly depressing episode which, sadly, is actively (deliberately?) and fast gaining preponderance in the industry. In quick succession, my heart stopped; the sun reversed, a flock of pigeons flew away, and a meerkat looked up. Truth be told, if I didn’t laugh, I would have cried. (By ‘laugh’ here I mean a well-rounded, knee-slapping, full-out, no-holds-barred hearty guffaw, complete with involuntary tears streaming down cheeks; the ‘crying’ is universally uncomplicated). So I did the next best thing: I Instagrammed it.

Of all the comments that I received on that post (I simulposted to Facebook), one caught my particular attention mostly because of the person who wrote it: “Bloody Australian creatives in Nairobi!!! [sic]”. Which got me thinking: what exactly is it with Australian creatives in Nairobi? And why would anyone automatically associate them with this heist?

The original.

The knock-off.

Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the aggrieved party in this fraud is Carlton Cold, a relatively obscure mid-strength Australian lager with a proclivity for cunningly innovative advertising, generally what we have come to expect from Down Under. Which then begs the question: why isn’t that legendary virtuosity replicating here, what with this oversupply of Australian creatives in our midst? Instead, we get the bogans; and larcenous dags at that.

Now, there’s lots to be said (and a lot has been said) about Ozzie creatives in the Kenyan advertising scene; and sure as eggs, for every Andrew White there are 1,000 Tim Pearsons lurking in the crevices, waiting—and fervently hoping—for even the teensiest ray of that oh-so-elusive superstardom. But if all we’re ever going to get out of this one-sided exchange program is an African 'renaissance' of advertising long disappeared from the Australian psyche, then I’m certain we are more than capable of finding them ourselves and unashamedly stealing them. We are Kenyans, after all. It’s what we’re best at.

Don't be surprised if you wake up to an unimaginative rendition
of this next Valentine's,  courtesy of your favourite local beer.

*******

The proverbial thing has finally hit the fan: it would appear that MTN Uganda long ago stopped giving a pink goddamn and will now approve anything remotely resembling an advertisement; as long as it has an image and some sort of copy on it (never mind that it is far inferior to a kindergartener’s doodlings), they will run it. But surely that must be the least of their worries at the moment: strategy seems to have vaporised to the Big Necropolis In The Sky where strategies go when they die (#MTNMoreMBs4Less, sometimes inconsistently appearing as #MTNMoreMBsForLess, as opposed, for instance, to #MoreForLess, suggested by one casual observer), and they have now resorted—with the apparent lack of a budget for photography—to naff stock imagery festooned with feebly Photoshopped elements... the bane of every fledgling designer. One can only imagine how they have interpreted this concept for TV, and I dare not contemplate radio, that notorious graveyard of Ugandan advertising.

And then we get to the copywriting because, as Polonius says in Hamlet,

Since brevity is the soul of wit

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief…

When ideas are few and far between, but you signed the contract, and client 
expects ads anyway. So you say, "Fuck it!"

It is beyond clarity that this is an MTN ad and rather apparent that, after hours and days of brainstorming, ‘we’ now have a mouth-watering offer and a campaign to accompany it. It is therefore superfluous to again squeeze the brand name and ‘MBs’ into the hashtag. Copywriting 101 dictates that you need not be wordy; please use one word where you could use two. Unless, of course, they thought Africell were going to squeeze their brand name into the hashtag... another opinion I came across in the hilarious debate ensuing from this debacle. Copywriting, ladies and gentlemen, is a craft; it is not an event, it’s a process. As Jesus famously observed, “Not everyone who calls himself a copywriter will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

We expected to see MTN at the very least geared up to finally bask in its long-awaited 15 minutes of glory, particularly after unceremoniously kicking MetropolitanRepublic to the kerb last year, if only as a modicum of redemption on the back of the miasma of dishonour that Metro dragged them through in the 2013 Loeries. But apparently not; it’s just another case of more of the same. So maybe the ‘blame’ does not lie with the agencies after all. And perhaps, as another observer noted, MTN might have rolled out with a more sincere hashtag: #MTNmoreBSforLess. And then there’s that MTN Pulse campaign. #IFear.

*******

Keeping with the current theme, we shall tarry a while with MTN Uganda, clearly the hottest talking point in the country at the moment. I was once in a heated argument with a Creative Director in Uganda who, in a hopeless last-ditch effort to justify a barefaced lifting of an award-winning don’t-drink-and-drive campaign and passing it off as his own creation, shrugged—with a wistful, faraway look in his eye; a forlorn figure at the end of his tether—“At least it will get talkability.” Well, if MTN’s grand marketing plan for the Pulse campaign is talkability, then they must be laughing all the way to the bank; or at the very least helping in no small way to pay off that gargantuan $108,000,000 loss from last financial year.

But things aren’t always how or what they seem. It now emerges that MTN Uganda’s advertising agency, TBWA Uganda, may not be entirely blameless in this series of unfortunate events. Or are they?

In less than just one year since the big announcement, TBWA (and Client, inevitably) have managed to spectacularly unravel, completely flying off the handle, and in super slo-mo to boot. And with MTN Pulse now in the limelight (no pun intended), hard questions are being asked of that TBWA ‘alliance’ and their desultory management of the account. It is instructive to note that TBWA have only TWO (2) campaigns out since landing the account 9 months ago, including that badly written social media travesty that "imitates what's happening in the real world". Everything else was recycled from work done at Metro. To provide a quick recapitulation, Pulse is MTN Group’s youth proposition and each market has a free hand to articulate it as it deems fit; Nigeria rolled out their campaign, Ghana did too. Well, Uganda (TBWA) developed their scripts and campaign and were preparing to shoot; only they weren't allowed to even talk to production houses. So technically, TBWA washed their hands of that disaster. But try explaining that to the average Ugandan:

“MTN Uganda adapted a campaign from MTN Nigeria and so far they are doing their best to fuck it up. Their execution clearly shows that the Ugandan agency didn’t really take time to understand how Nigeria executed the campaign. Don’t tell me about the different market bullshit because they would then have not adapted something from the Nigerian market. The way the MTN Pulse campaign is being executed here shows how the MTN creative team is not so in touch with the market it’s playing in.”

“I have no real knowledge of marketing. However, truth is I've never really understood MTN Pulse. Don't know if it’s the intention of MTN to keep it vague and abstract, but it's not something that so many people can clearly explain.”

“I hope you are talking about this Pulse/No Fear thing. I have struggled to understand it naye biganye.”

“MTN Pulse is a good campaign if you go look at how MTN Nigeria executed it... I would compare it to Safaricom’s Blaze in a way. But the Ugandan chaps really vomited on the whole thing - they aren’t making sense in any of their communication about the campaign. They are not unpacking that Pulse feel at all.”

“This pulse thingie is the worst campaign ever... the whole concept is too farfetched to resonate with a typical Ugandan.”

“I need to check out the Nigerian ad to find out what inspired this ridiculousness/madness.”

“And who the fuck thought they could execute the Pulse and No Fear slogans all together?!! I will forever be called a hater but that was bullshit on stilts.” REPLY: “My thoughts exactly... there's no correlation/single mindedness.”

And so on, and so forth. So where did the rain start beating the MTN Uganda brand team?

For starters, MTN’s CMO completely refused to let TBWA touch their own campaign—instead he was adamant that it couldn't be done locally and went right ahead to brief South African production houses, an indictment of sorts on TBWA’s competence to handle the account—which is why there are no Ugandans in that commercial. It follows then that every time people see it, they don't connect because there are no local landmarks or recognisable props. Now with the ever-present lingering perception that MTN is siphoning money out of Uganda, one can only imagine the damage that shooting a $1M TVC in South Africa and the sinking reality of all that money leaving the country is doing to the brand, not to mention no one in the industry is benefiting.

And then the bottom falls off in picturesque fashion:

TBWA’s Business Unit Manager, Freddie Kigozi, resigned in December; Account Director Hairah Kibuuka also resigned; Media Director Geoffrey Luyuyo? Gone! Ditto two Account Managers, Linus Mashugri and Adrian Kayongo. Meanwhile, there is a big fight inside the alliance about whether or not to retain Kinaya Digital, but it appears that they (she, really) can't be kicked out. The person they can immediately be rid of, however, is Dr. Peter Magona, who is slated to exit stage left mid year after a clusterfuck that saw David Case send a hush-hush star-crossed email to the gods on Mount TBWA detailing how plans were well underway to buy/kick him [Magona] out, but ended up cc'ing the whole world and their dogs. And—wait for it—Peter Magona as well! Executive Creative Director Ulrich leaves at end of year; Ivan Musoke is at the helm as Associate CD, and that's going as well as can be expected.

So like the Trump White House, MTN Uganda has become a tombstone. A veritable career ender. 

ADDENDUM

A couple of hours after I made this post, Trump's erstwhile blue-eyed boy, Rex Tillerson, was given the boot while on TDY in Africa.