What Airtel did to Vodacom brand? (Tanzania)

In Tanzania we say “Ngoma droo,” we can also call this tag of war “kutangulia sio kufika.”

If anyone knows the Airtel story then they know how aggressive it is in business, what it did to vodacom is nothing personal though, just business. Airtel embraced branding as one of the most important aspects to help them cover market growth, financial performance, cultural aspects and government relations, which they happily did in only one year all over Africa.

After buying Zain and its operations in 15 countries, Airtel was officially launched in Africa in 2010. Their plans to cover Africa, to rebrand in a continent which is absolutely diverse was definitely a major challenge and given there were well established companies like Vodafone(Vodacom TZ) and MTN.

In Tanzania we have seen this transformation three times; from celtel to zain, before we could adapt it changed to airtel and to this day we hardly know what to call it anymore.

But during this last transformation, Vodacom was also rebranding where we saw it move from a colour mostly used in bathrooms to the most powerful action oriented colour, psychologically proven to make people take action; red! As if all that wasn’t enough, Vodacom’s new logo was amazingly modern and perfect, everyone was aware of it kids, old, blue, yellow and black people. But beforeVodacom couldn't cherish the attention, along came Aritel with almost the same image and everything that people could hardly differentiate them.



by tycoon branding co.



Now that was not all; whatever Vodacom was doing Airtel did it better. Airtel became part of our towns and if Airtel ever moved away from us our towns would look deserted. Airtel moved to every part of this country negotiating, sponsoring, cheating, helping, employing, annoying, entertaining, and everything else any giant company does. It even made rebranding the new way out.