Yu, Orange duel over promotional slogans

By Macharia Kamau

Ordinarily, the word Ziada would not raise eyebrows, at least not in the telecommunications sector.

It has, however, pitted two mobile operators against each other, deepening an already existing rivalry between them.

Essar telecom recently launched a promotion called Za Ziada, which bears a degree of similarity with a reward scheme run, by Telkom Kenya.

Telkom Kenya has been running its Ziada customer royalty programme for subscribers on its Orange mobile network for more than a year.

The one-point-one-shilling scheme is similar to others run by mobile operators that give subscribers an opportunity to redeem points earned for airtime, data bundles and even cell phones depending on the number of points.

A week ago, Essar Telecom Kenya – which runs the Yu brand — launched a consumer promotion dubbed Za Ziada.

The promotion, the firm said, would give customers up to 50 per cent extra talk-time upon reloading their phones with different denomination scratch cards.

The bonus airtime can be used for any service (data, calls and text messages) across networks.

The promotional catch phrase, Ziada, is the bone of contention between the two operators over who holds rights to use the word. This deepens the rivalry between the two, as other than being competitors, the firms hold differing opinions on the mobile price wars that the industry has been embroiled in for the last six months.

Code of ethics

"We had our product in the market first and the competition needs to respect that and get more creative," Chief Executive Telkom Kenya Mickael Ghossein told Financial Journal.

"I will be writing to Essar Telecom Kenya to complain about the issue and ask them to stop using the word in their promotions."

He added that Essar had broken the advertising code of ethics that prohibits use of competitor words and slogans in advertising and marketing.

The code of ethics for Association of Practitioners in Advertising of Kenya prohibits advertisers from use of competitor slogans to market their services or products since it might bring confusion and conflict to the consumer.

The code is, however, not backed a legal framework. Essar Telecom on its side says it had not contravened any of the ethical or legal code and was just employing a popular Swahili word in its bid to increase subscriber base.

"Ziada is a Swahili word and no one person or company can lay claim to owning it or proprietary rights over it," said Atul Chaturvedi, Yu country manager.

"We have also not gotten any complaints from anyone and both products are clear on what they are promoting and do not in anyway see how they would confuse customers."

Chaturvedi said the choice of name was in line with the promotional tariff that essentially gave additional talk time to subscribers."It has nothing to do with what the competition has," said Chaturvedi.

Extra talk time

"We believe in giving consumers value and benefits over and above what they are paying for. The new offer enables our consumers enjoy extra talk time at the normal recharging cost which, effectively, translates to lower rates for the consumers. This is captured in the name of the promotion."

The feud by the two operators – who are also the latest entrants into the local mobile telephony industry — remotely resembles a recent one between the two older operators Safaricom and Airtel Kenya.

In its advertising campaigns in August last year, Airtel (then Zain) used slogans like ‘going green is not always the best option’, which was seen as a direct attack on Safaricom whose corporate tagline is the better option.