Happy Ending:The Pleasure That Comes With Brand Purpose.

“Airtel-Safaricom War: A tale of sporadic battles of creative ads vs. brand purpose”. That was the title of my piece that ran on 2nd March 2019 (link below refers). Today, I give the discussion a happy ending. So what actually is Brand Purpose? Not a very difficult question I must say but one that can only be tackled by first answering; what is a Brand? In my very own definition, I will define a brand as a story: the sum of which includes different tangible and intangible assets such as logo, tagline, messaging/communication(s), product(s), service(s), price, customer experience, positioning etc that a company uses in an effort of wooing customers and standing out from competition. Brand purpose, simply put is the core belief of the business i.e. why the business exists?

Now here we go again, let’s do an incision of the two once more. I Googled “What’s the Safaricom story and I also Googled “What’s the Airtel Kenya Story?” https://www.safaricom.co.ke/about/about-safaricom/who-we-are/our-story& https://techmoran.com/2014/04/28/the-evolution-growth-of-airtel-in-kenya/ rank as top links for the two respectively. “In the year 2000, we began the Safaricom journey with a view to Transform Lives.” This is Safaricom’s opening line. “Bharti Airtel or commonly Airtel is one of world’s top telecommunications services providers with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa.” This is Airtel’s opening line. Now, not to go too much into structure but that alone creates a world of a difference. From the GET-GO you already see Safaricom as a company out to “transform lives” and Airtel is focused on WHO they are and WHAT they do. If one is to be deep about it, the two show one person who cares about others and another who’s screaming at your face about how great they are. If someone is wooing you, “utaingia box ya nani?”

Somewhere into the first paragraph, Airtel comes out with their purpose-“to connect communities across Kenya.” Again, not to go into structure, but I still have reservations as to how it is revealed. Going into the detail; we’re looking at two companies here- let’s break down the ‘How’ and ‘What’ each does to accomplish their purpose.  To the best of my memory, the first wave of Safaricom’s presence was felt through Simu ya Jamii. A product that can be attributed as one of the first viable solutions that enabled simpler person to person communications. Also, do you guys remember how the entire country was caught up in the rush of owning a Simu ya Jamii? It did give and transform economic lives of the innovators and early adopters for sure, until the majority spoilt the party.

On and On, Safaricom gave us Paybill, shone light with M-Kopa, paired & gave us Mshwari, have recently Fulizad us, spread their wings and gave us Little Cabs and most notably birthed the mother of all innovations-Mpesa. Mpesa not only transformed lives, but transformed the economy, the financial sector and created a path for the world to follow. And you’d think that they’ve done just about so much already to transforming lives. Think again, sometime last year, these guys invested in a whole Innovation Hub dubbed Safaricom Alpha to incubate and keep transforming our lives with their brilliance. See the sustained & repeated pattern of everything fitting into their purpose? No dilemma of the egg or the chicken here, purpose always comes first!

Over to Airtel; how and what do they do to achieve their brand purpose of “connecting communities across Kenya?” First & foremost, if you click on the link above, after laying down their brand purpose, Airtel goes at length to elaborate on among other things: driving the turnaround, their data and ecommerce solutions, Airtel Money, Airtel Express shops, Airtel mobile units, Airtel Rising with the star units etc etc. All great stuff no doubt, but none that supports their “connecting communities” purpose. Network is where they should have started from and just at Network, is where majority of the consumers have a problem with Airtel. Not to take my word for it, but even if you were to do a quick scheme through of the comments following the release of the battle ads, this point comes out clear. That’s consumer feedback; I think that counts for a lot.

Evidently, one has a clear purpose and feeds into that, while the other, I can’t quite explain what’s happening there. But here’s the problem of either having a fuzzy purpose, a brand not believing in its purpose or a brand just not knowing how to go about in breathing life into its purpose. You get caught up in an endless race. You take any path and more often than not, that path often leads to confrontation, collision and constant competition. Whereas competition is not a bad thing, yours is always a competition with others rather than with your own goals. You burn out trying to malign and mudsling as others are setting the pace. Yours turns out to be a constant life of battle, while your neighbor savors all that comes with Purpose.

Allow me to make a quick comparison. According to Fortune; an American business magazine which is published and owned by Time, Apple was the world’s most profitable company in the United States as at 2018. Apple’s revolutionary business moment was and still remains in their brand purpose of “think different.” Basically, Apple came to show the world that we do not have to be slaves of the ordinary. They “think different” and shake up status quo. That is their anchor philosophy and purpose and that’s why it remains a colossus of a corporate body recording insane revenues and profits. All their products and services feed into their Purpose and they remain unshaken. They are built on Purpose and from Purpose they always get the pleasure of happy endings.

So how about infusing Purpose and give that hard beginning a happy ending; something to consider?

 https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/airtel-safaricom-war-tale-sporadic-battles-creative-ads-walter/