Task

The introduction of the mobile number portability by the NCC was received by MTN with some apprehension and the reason was simple; in other markets across Africa where mobile number portability had been carried out the dominant market player always lost out - losing subscribers to smaller players .

This meant that MTN, by virtue of its position as Nigeria’s most dominant player was the most vulnerable in the circumstance. MTN was eager to avoid that state of affairs in Nigeria and their brief to DDB was

simple – come up with a strategy and campaign to prevent subscriber attrition, maintain MTN’s market share and if possible grow it.

 

Result

Enter Saka the face of Etisalat. Our choice of Saka was a marketing communication coup. With Saka

we did the unthinkable; we took a face previously associated with a competing telecom brand and made him the face of our campaign and the impact was instantaneous. The TV commercial became the

first ever in Nigeria to amass over 100,000 YouTube views in 7 days and went on to gather over 10,000,000 views, likes and impressions across social media platforms in 1 month.

It also went on to become one of the most discussed Nigerian adverts ever after trending on twitter and spurring a series of online versions on YouTube.