The “Switch from KochoKocho to Airtel” rage on social media

The Telecommunications space in Kenya is filled with cut-throat competition compared to other African countries especially with the entrance of investors who want to back Airtel and Telkom. Telkom has got some backing from Helios Group while Airtel is being boosted by their mother company, Bharti Airtel India. These two seem to be giving Safaricom a run for their money and have had some serious effects on Safaricom’s market share. Latest data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) shows that the telco has lost about 17 percentage points of its market share over the past decade — dropping to 67 percent as at March this year, from 84 percent in March 2008.

The Migration

As of last year, Airtel’s subscribers rose 11.9 percent from 8.7 million to 9.7 million to secure a market share of 21.4 percent. Safaricom subscribers’ market share has plunged to 65.4 percent from 72.6 percent in June last year while Telkom gained 0.2 percent of the subscribers that are being chased by these Telcos. Airtel and Telkom seem to be taking the fight to Safaricom’s doorstep when they decided to merge to form one entity to take on Safaricom andthis is what Kenyans had to say when the announcement was made.

This shift in subscribers has been largely influenced by the rise of the need for more data. How else would 19-year olds stay on Instagram for an entire lecture while adding some filters on their “#Classthings” snaps? In the mobile data/Internet business, Safaricom’s market share declined to 68.4 percent from 72.8 percent, while Airtel gained 4.6 percentage points to 23.1 percent as of last year. Telkom Kenya‘s market share dropped to 7.6 percent from 7.8 percent while that of Finserve Africa Ltd, which operates the Equitel network, fell by 0.1 percentage points to stand at 0.5 percent from 0.6 percent.

According to reporting by The East African, The data/Internet market in Kenya has grown remarkably over the years, buoyed by the arrival of the Smartphones. The total data/Internet subscriptions grew by 8.2 percent to 36.1 million users between January and March this year from 33.3 million between October and December 2017. Young people have been the driving factor on why these Telcos will kill each other to be the facilitators on how they access the Internet Real Estate.

McKinsey Global Institute report on Digital globalization: The new era of global flows notes that young people are using global digital platforms to learn, find work, showcase their talent, and build personal networks. “This is a moment for companies to rethink their organizational structures, products, assets, and competitors.”

The Campaigns

Over the past one month, Airtel has been running campaigns to lure people to switch from Safaricom to Airtel as their ads indicate, of course, they are using colour codes in order to be in line with ethical advertising standards. The Airtel advertising account has largely been managed by The WPP Scanad group which develops ads for other multinationals like Coca Cola and Nestle, Airtel has also engaged with The Village Creative Group in the past for their ads.The #SwitchtoAirtel commercial has had people talking on social media and we picked the best reactions for you.The ad below is what got most people talking at first before the rest of Airtel’s collateral became a subject of discussion on the internet;

Twitter is the first place where Kenyans head to if they want to have a serious conversation about something (Twitter wars). #KOT reacted hilariously to this ad and some comments were too good and some clearly elicited anger from people. Some went as far as creating parodies for the same?, like these gentlemen who did an “Ingia na Data Kwa Nyumba” parody;

Some customers were angered with the ad due to the fact that Airtel’s network coverage isn’t as good as Safaricom’s even if they were to switch;

The fellows on Facebook had something to say as well though this piece of online real estate is losing it’s popularity day in day out (Btw, Facebook already lost 15 million users since 2017, Read more on this story here by FastCompany), to be honest, we couldn’t find something interesting on Facebook that may excite you about this ad?. It seems Facebook folks are more chilled and laid back when it comes to keyboard wars.

Instagram seems to be giving #KOT a run for capturing attention given the fact that its one of the most popular Facebook-owned platforms where #challenges for anything have taken root.

The Instagram community never lacks creativity, this one caught viewers’ attention when it made reference to “Press one to speak to blah blah fluff” when you call Safaricom customer Care.

The professional community couldn’t hold their comments back on this, Yes, LinkedIn folks had something to say too, it caught the attention of one board member at The Marketing Society of Kenya;

Will these ads really make people switch from The Green Apple to The Red Apple?….

Do you have a story from Africa with a social media angle which you would like our readers to know, shoot us an email at socialmedia@onesha.co.ke?