Vodafone and music, great bedfellows
Phew! It is three days to Christmas? Three teensy weensy days to Christmas? Funny how time flies! How has the year been for you? Has it been good, bad, terrible, okay, great, messy, traumatic, eventful or hurtful? However it may have been, I guess you will be grateful that you have made it this far in the year.
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Being in the Christmas season means a lot of events have been happening all over the country and those who love to revel in these events have been showing to get their hearts’ fill of satisfaction.
There will be more events happening between now and the end of the year and you have my permission to enjoy as much as you can. But please, do it in moderation and with decorum.
I was at one carol service last week and it was one at which I had the most fun. Stanbic Bank had invited me to their Christmas carol service at the Movenpick hotel and it was a wonderful programme. The bankers had formed inter department choirs to sing carols.
It was good and I most enjoyed the performance of the second choir. The atmosphere was charged well for the show and honestly, if I don’t attend any other carol service this season, I will not lack. Mawuko Afadzinu, Kojo Larbi and the marketing team need to be commended for a good show, however, if they will do this again, the ambience should be better and the technical failings should be limited.
Anyway, what I want to talk about really before we all go and eat our Christmas chickens is the relationship between big business and music. In this instance case I want to dwell on some of the things Vodafone has used music to achieve since arriving on the scene some six years or so ago.
Marketers are known to latch on to activities that appeal to their target audience to interact with, engage them and generally communicate their proposition to them. Some of these activities include sports and entertainment as broad categories with some settling on specific genres within these.
For example, it is a known fact that Shell has been associated for a long time with Ferrari in the motor sport Formula One and has used the vehicle brand to run several campaigns by associating the quality of its brand to that of the vehicle and the sport. There are other global brands which are associated with sports such as Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Back home, we can talk about how Guinness has been associated with football for a long time from the days of the Guinness Gala that preceded the former first division league till now when the English Premier League broadcast is with the brands sponsorship.
As far as entertainment goes, music has been a key platform on which brands leverage to engage their target consumers. MTN for example, has used music throughout its evolution from Spacefon, Spacefon Areeba, Areeba to its current state. Other telecoms operators like Tigo and Glo have also used music and musicians heavily throughout their brand life to engage consumers.
It seems to me that if there is any brand that has managed to use the music platform effectively in the last few years, it has got to be Vodafone. Not long after they arrived on the scene, it was very obvious that music was going to play a key role in their marketing, communications and brand engagement initiatives.
You will recall how the brand in its bid to appeal to a youthful audience and play within their space managed to swing the sponsorship of 4Syte TV from MTN. They ensured that the sponsorship of that particular programme will transcend television as they went further to sponsor and birth the 4Syte Music Video Awards.
They would later lose that property to the previous sponsors, but the point was made and the objective for the acquisition was met.
One year after their launch of the brand in the market they introduced, the 020 Live Concert which was meant to be used to thank the customers of the service for staying with them for an entire year. It was one of the biggest concerts this country had seen at the time with local and foreign acts mounting the stage to do what they do best.
Whether it was part of the strategy or a function of post event assessment, the success of the first 020 Live gave them an impetus and a reason to consider a second event which ended up being even bigger than the maiden one with Trey Songz headlining the show.
There was a third one in 2012 instalment took place with another big name artiste, Ludacris on the bill along with other great names from the continent and here in Ghana. That meant that the event had come to stay as a part of the properties Vodafone would use to engage consumers on a yearly basis and one that industry people and party goers look forward to.
The fourth one that wasn’t as huge as the previous three in terms of artistes on the bill, it was a party on the beach that patrons, mostly customers of Vodafone, enjoyed very much.
The next music related property that Vodafone turned its attention to was the biggest one. I assume the thinking at the time would be this, “if we are going to go for music as strategy to reach our prime prospects then we have to go for the jocular and the biggest music property, for that matter.”
There were rumours in the entertainment circles that Charterhouse was going to sell the Ghana Music Awards to Vodafone. Don’t forget that the headline sponsor at the time was MTN. The announcement was made and as the rumours had its, Vodafone had become the new sponsors of the event.
Vodafone demanded and got their name on the awards and thus it changed from Ghana Music Awards to Vodafone Ghana Music Awards. That coup was not pleasing to the previous sponsors leading to more than a few collateral damages in the form of reprisals to Charterhouse.
My best part of the revamped music awards festival was the introduction of the red room. Now, that was an experience that anyone who has ever had it would forever mention it. All the three editions that have taken place so far came with the experience that is basic standard for all such Vodafone experiential activities.
Another property that Vodafone introduced as a means of executing their music strategy was Icons. The television reality show was positioned as one that comes with the highest quality of production and targeted at a youthful audience.
The quality of the first edition with Quantus, Gina West and Stephanie Benson as judges and Benny Blanco as host in my view has been the best among all the seasons so far. The quality of judges started to decline from the second season.
However, the point here really is not about the quality as much as the strategic purpose that Icons was introduced to play. It is my considered opinion that the brand thought well with that and though the executions could be spoken about in other discussions, Icons has helped to push the Vodafone brand further in the areas of awareness, engagement, interaction and association with youth.
As you may know, Vodafone also launched an online service they called Vodafone Live and it was meant to give an opportunity to young people to play with music and get as much from music as they could from the portal. Thus the digital part of the strategy as far as music was concerned had been covered.
Okay so I have been driving at a point. Vodafone has chosen music as a means to reach its customers. The three main properties it has used over the years to execute this strategy have been Vodafone 020 Live, Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, Vodafone Icons and Vodafone Live on the wings to support the digital engagement agenda.
Of course, Vodafone will not be satisfied with being number two to MTN in terms of mobile voice subscribers and so those should be moot questions. I think the music agenda will and should continue and it ought to be done better to get the best out of it!
Have a Merry Christmas and let’s meet next Monday to start a review of the radio and TV scene in the year 2014. See you.
@TheGhMediaGuru