Did Orange Cameroon DELIVER or FAIL to deliver at the BDMAs?
I have, in the past, expressed my feelings about the idea of event sponsorship in Cameroon. I thought in 2017, I will stop seeing event promo material with 50 sponsors just to end up having an event that looks like the individual effort of a ‘bootstrapping’ event organizer. Meanwhile I am not privy to the actual contributions of the sponsors of the BDMA, let me write here based on what met my eye.
In the days following the award ceremony, a lot was being said online about the importance of award ceremonies in cameron, the main concern being - whether or not these awards do anything to advance the career of those being celebrated. Opinions on the matter are panned with one side arguing that it is the place of the nominees or winners to figure out how to use the platform to create added value while some on the other hand lean towards the belief that the award shows in themselves do not have any exploitable value. I want to side with the latter on this one.
It is in fact true that you can take a horse to the stream but you cannot force it to drink water. In the case of most award shows in Cameroon, we can say they set out to take the horses to the stream but they hardly ever arrive the stream.
I was a winner at the BDMAs, taking home the trophy for best content creator. I still hold that I don’t do what I do for awards but I am happy I won out of respect for those who took the time and heart to vote for me.
Besides the trophy, each winner was presented with a gift bag by Orange. I am not privy to information on the total sponsorship package offered by orange but I was totally disappointed in the contents of the gift bag which to me, does 99.9% to promote the orange brand, and 0.01% to help the winners do more of the work for which they were being recognized.
The Orange gift bag contained� - a 2500mAh Orange branded power bank - a Orange branded selfie stick - A female Orange Branded crop top T shirt - A unisex Orange Branded T shirt
As A winner, all the gifts from Orange are utterly useless to me. Besides the fact that the 2500mAh power bank can charge only 1/4 of the battery of my main mobile working tool (iPhone), I already have 5 power banks. To make it worst, the power bank has a backlight that shines to reveal the Orange logo while you charge, wasting away the already limited power supply.
I also now find myself thinking of uses of a selfie stick. I have one which I have never used but because I don’t want to admit that Orange actually gave me nothing, I am trying to find new applications of the selfie stick in my work. As for the T - shirts…
One of the reason my readers like my complaining self is for the fact that my complaints are always accompanied by solutions. So what could Orange include in that gift bad that could have helped all the winners in their work still at no extra cost to Orange?
How about?
- 30 GB of data per month for one year?
I mean x22 winners at a market rate of 1,000 XAF per GB of data, we are talking about 7,500,000 XAF that orange can sacrifice in a year. I mean this is supposedly the ‘most prestigious’ digital media award and Orange is supposedly the proudest sponsor.
For most of the winners, internet data is the most valuable asset and probably the highest cost pool for them and to think of the amount of data people buy and spend consuming the content created by those being celebrated by the award organizers, I think that is too little to ask.
Orange could even gift the 30GB/month of data to all the nominees and it still wouldn’t hurt their financial bottom-line. In fact, it will help it considering the fact that people are only willing to buy more data if there is more interesting content to consume.
Let’s not even talk of the fact that there was no free wifi at the venue during the event.
That said, I know in Cameroon, doing it is always more important than doing it right. For the sake of it being at its inception, the event organizers deserve a get out of jail free card but I believe organizers should stop leaving it to the discretion of the sponsors to decide what they are willing to offer, especially for big name brands like Orange. Event organizers need to have demands instead of ‘begging’ for anything weh e dey - as it seems to be the case now.
I want to share a message with Orange Cameroon and it is completely burrowed from one of my virtual mentors - Seth Godin and that that message is:- Care More.
He writes:-
It's only two words, but it's hard to think of a better mantra for the organization that is smart enough to understand the core underpinning of their business, as well as one in search of a reason for being. No need to get all tied up in subcycles of this leads to this which leads to that so therefore I care... Instead, there's the opportunity to follow the direct and difficult road of someone who truly cares about what's being made and who it is for.
Caring is free
In the short run, of course, not caring can save you some money.
Don't bother making the facilities quite so clean. Save time and hassle and let the display get a little messy. Don't worry so much about one particular customer, because you're busy and hiring more people takes time and money.
But in the long run, caring pays for itself.
Caring is expensive, but it also generates loyalty and word of mouth. In the long run, an organization that puts in extra effort gets rewarded. Not to mention that caring makes us all more human. Worth it.
A company of the size of Orange cannot continue to think like a primary school kid that does not understand the multiplier effect of money. It is disappointing how they act like the economy is a finite pie and all they have to do is to get the largest share because it is running out.
There is a lot of opportunity to create more wealth for their customers who in turn will turn to be more profitable.
Any-Ha!
What do I know?
- Tino Foy