For about three days now, I notice that the colourful landscape in Tamale has changed. More and more shops and 'containers' have recently been coloured in a soft, olivy green.
This can only mean one thing: a new mobile operator is coming.
It is a big difference with what happened over the last two years. In 2008, Vodafone took over the national Ghana Telecom and within a few weeks the whole country was coloured red. It was a real aggressive marketing campaign, nobody here up north had ever heard of the company but within a short period of time everybody started to use the name "Vodafone" instead of the original "Ghana Telecom" or even ancient "OneTouch". All shops in the streets got a new colour, very bright red, you could not deny it.
Of course, competitor MTN could not ignore this and they as well wielded the paintbrush in an attempt to retake the streets using screaming yellow for the store fronts.
Now, this new colour in the landscape is so subtle. So soothing. It reminds me of grassy meadows, and I find it actually relaxing. Much better than the aggressive red (which is also Airtel's colour, now that we are name-dropping Telecom brands anyway).
The cool green is not disturbing at all, I would even call it a welcome change. Funny thing is that many walls are now coloured this way, but no brand logo has been put yet.
Still, as I have been traveling south over the passed months, I know that it is the colour of the new operator "GLO", so they are now starting their campaign in Tamale as well.
You know what they say: "When it rains in Accra, it drips (a few months later) in Tamale".
Update: yesterday afternoon, only a few hours after posting this entry, the GLO-logos started to appear. So we can all affirm that my soothing green soothsaying was indeed correct.
As our lodge is located at the main road from Kumasi to Tamale, of course the gentlemen of GLO came asking whether they couldn't paint our front in the soothing green. Personally, I wouldn't mind the color, but the only logo that I want on our walls is our own.
When I was riding past the post office later that day, I noticed that our colleagues from Alhassan Hotel didn't mind the makeover. I must say that the freshly paint, green walls look very neat. Much better than the extremely ugly black-magenta-cyan branding from Zain that they had first. It reminded me too much of the 8-bit color scheme of the good old Space Invaders.
Nah, then give me grassy hills anytime.
Of course, competitor MTN could not ignore this and they as well wielded the paintbrush in an attempt to retake the streets using screaming yellow for the store fronts.
Now, this new colour in the landscape is so subtle. So soothing. It reminds me of grassy meadows, and I find it actually relaxing. Much better than the aggressive red (which is also Airtel's colour, now that we are name-dropping Telecom brands anyway).
The cool green is not disturbing at all, I would even call it a welcome change. Funny thing is that many walls are now coloured this way, but no brand logo has been put yet.
Still, as I have been traveling south over the passed months, I know that it is the colour of the new operator "GLO", so they are now starting their campaign in Tamale as well.
You know what they say: "When it rains in Accra, it drips (a few months later) in Tamale".
Update: yesterday afternoon, only a few hours after posting this entry, the GLO-logos started to appear. So we can all affirm that my soothing green soothsaying was indeed correct.
As our lodge is located at the main road from Kumasi to Tamale, of course the gentlemen of GLO came asking whether they couldn't paint our front in the soothing green. Personally, I wouldn't mind the color, but the only logo that I want on our walls is our own.
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| Zain branding, picture by Sigma Beta |
Nah, then give me grassy hills anytime.
Interesting. It seems this is a pan-African strategy. In Rwanda, we noticed a lot of yellow MTN shops and houses, too. (And blue ones, for Tigo, IIRC.)
ReplyDeleteI, for one, welcome your new green mobile telephony overlords.