If you have not been shot in the face by Mo the Meercat’s paintball gun or watched everyone from Elton and Jan to Michael de Pinna and BankoleOmotso (two guys from the old Vodacom ad’s) finding interesting ways to paint a blue room red then you have not seen any of Vodacom’s TV and print ads and have been living with that Afrikaans family underground beneath the Chicken Licken. I honestly thought they could have done something far more creative or at least had some slow motion footage of red paint splattering about.
“Over the years, the organisation has grown and the world has changed, and our customers have become more complex. So it is time for us to relook how we do things and perhaps become a younger company by looking at new ways of staying relevant,” Uys (@uyspj) told a media briefing on Friday afternoon, 1 April 2011, in Sandton, Johannesburg.
“Power to you” the new controversial slogan and swopping out of “fone” for “com” on the Vodafone logo has led to Vodacom spending over R200 Million bucks on red paint. You might wonder how they could remain the sponsors of the blue bulls but when you are throwing that kind of money around anything can happen. Funny enough Cell C was the first company to apply for “Power to you” to be registered as a trademark in South Africa. They were quite perplexed to discover the ASA ruling in Vodacom’s favour.
“The ASA has found in favour of Vodafone which is an international company over Cell C which is a South African company in our own territory even though we strongly doubt whether South African consumers would recognise ‘Power to You’ as being associated with Vodafone,” Cell C CEO Lars Reicheltsaid.
More recently Reichelt (@nowires ) tweeted “I’d rather be in the black than in the red… since Friday that feeling is particularly strong 
” which I am sure will be the first of many interesting competitive angles Cell C will use to their marketing advantage over the next couple months.
Well the Red is here to stay and we will be plagued by these ad’s in between CSI and the last few episodes of Two and a Half men. The only thing I can advise is PVR your shows and practice using the fast-forward button.
