With Nigeria and Nigerians, pride is everything. Despite the challenges the country faces, Nigerians remain proud in their diverse cultures, languages, resplendent fashion and creative entrepreneurship. Culture and pride – as seen in bits of our expression through entertainment, sports, arts and fashion – remain our most viable export. This is why we tenaciously hold on to our own, projecting this around the globe, where foreigners continue adopt cultural elements from Nigeria.
We love our music, films, food, languages, slang and our peculiar manner of speaking often referred to as ‘Nigerianisms’. Representation matters to us because we are socialized from birth to embrace community and look for ourselves in others, often as a touchpoint of our shared existence.
Brands in Nigeria know and use this to their advantage in building products for this market. In fact, at the base of brand psychology is an understanding of how the human mind works. If a brand is the perception of an organization or product that exists in the minds of those who encounter said organization, then an understanding of the human mind is critical to the work of campaigns and the professionals who engage in selling and branding initiatives. Understanding users, as well as the context of use, informs the development of brands that deliver the desired effect.
Global brands in Nigeria tap into our national pride and sentiment to create products and campaigns that connect deeply with us on a local level; appealing locally to a market by using global strategies of marketing but keeping the specifics local. World soda giant, Coca-Cola, launched the ‘Mama di mama’ campaign in 2019, using a popular local slang for maternal deference to create a marketing campaign that celebrated the importance of mothers in the family. Pepsi, their main rival, also created the ‘Long Throat’ campaign in 2015, with help from the word ‘Long Throat’, a Nigerianism denoting ambition and consumption. All around us, marketing campaigns possess deep attributions to the local lingo. It’s challenging to find a mass-market product or a targeted campaign for the general populace that lacks these inclusions.
That’s why the new DStv and GOtv campaign sits squarely at the top of recent brand marketing activations. MultiChoice Nigeria in November announced an expanded set of DStv and GOtv packages offering more options and flexibility. An official statement sent to pressmen makes the claim that “customers will have more entertainment options to choose from.” For the first time, new packages are surprisingly given ‘Made in Naija’ names that reflect popular local slangs and vernacular. For DStv, new monikers for packages include DStv Confam and DStv Yanga, while GOtv has GOtv JOLLI and GOtv JINJA as its latest additions. These new low-tier packages bring value to more customers and joins the high-tier packages: DStv Premium, Compact Plus, Compact and GOtv Max that still exist.
The names of the new packages appear strategic: Yanga means ‘swag’ while Confam denotes ‘Assurance’; Jolli is ‘sweetness’ and Jinja means ‘to excite’. These titles can be reworked and be represented with traditional English words. But why would Nigerians gravitate towards ‘GOtv Excitement’, when they can have GOtv JINJA? The answer is in the ingenuity behind these names.
MultiChoice Nigeria has been in Nigeria since 1993, and today over 70% of Nigerians can enjoy content in their mother tongue while interacting with the firm through multiple touchpoints including sales agents, installers, and retailers. It’s an extensive network that runs to all ends of Nigeria and can reliably be credited as one of the country’s legacy businesses. This growth has only been possible through years of customer research and the internalization of feedback into products and offerings that identify and reflect the pulse of the people. Local content—which sits at the core of the business—continues to thrive. And to bring that closer to the people, the company continues to evolve its offerings, leading to an economic impact which runs into hundreds of billions of naira.
The company employs over a thousand individuals, with a supply value chain comprising more than 10,000 dealers, retailers, installers, sales agents and ‘sabimen’. According to information on the company’s website, an independent research in 2014 estimated that at that time, MultiChoice Nigeria had a positive direct economic impact of N34 billion and that, through various multipliers, this increased to N418 billion. In addition, the business paid N22.4 billion in taxes and fees and spent N9.98 billion on content and local production facilities. Much of that has propped up Nollywood, mostly through Africa Magic original productions, Big Brother Naija, AMVCA, the MultiChoice Talent Factory, and directly employing thousands of directors, writers, actors, film and lighting technicians, plus many others.
The future of marketing is dynamic and continues to move as societies evolve, and the human mind stays fluid. MultiChoice Nigeria understands this, and with each new rollout, they provide value couched in the pride that comes with being a Nigerian.
