Branding: A failed attempt to re-brand Orange Uganda to Africell
On the 23rd of December, Africell sent messages to all it’s newly acquired subscribers informing them that from the said date, Orange has now become Africell. This was it’s attempt to re-brand from a globally known company to the little known but fast growing telecom. Before the messages were sent out, the Orange signpost at the clement hill road head office was replaced with an Africell signpost.
After a difficult take over which has now been made final, Africell is facing the challenge to successfully re-brand. Africell is not the first to face this challenge in Uganda. Celtel had to re-brand to Zain and later, Zain to Airtel. Airtel also had a challenge of absorbing Warid Telecom after the take over in a marriage that some say wasn't so successful.
Successful re-branding can be a challenge but it’s not impossible. Whether you are re-branding an already existing company as a result of a merger or take over or may be you are making an entry into a new market like Smart Telecom and Vodafone are making in Uganda. Below I look at a series of events that have seen Africell fail in it’s initial rebranding efforts. I also later in another post look at how they could have done it differently and successfully
Rebranding Social Media Pages
With experience from rebranding a web startup, I can certainly identify with what it takes to rebrand. My take is that for a corporate company, its better to take some social media channels from scratch in order to build an audience/following. Let’s see what Africell did.
Twitter is a bit more flexible and simple than Facebook and Google plus when it comes to migration. Africell managed to change the @OrangeUgandaLTD twitter handle to @AfricellUG without hustle. This gave them 14.1K followers which is a good start.
Facebook is different. After a particular number of page likes (about 200), you are not allowed to change the the name or url except under special circumstances which include directly contacting Facebook. The Orange Uganda Facebook page has 8M likes and It’s unfortunate that it may not be possible to change the name and url. Africell may have to build a new following/audience from scratch.
I don't believe it was a smart move to change the page profile picture without having dealt with the actual migration or done official communication about the rebranding.
Google Plus
Google Plus migration policy also doesn't allow the changing of url’s and names. Since Google Plus wasn’t such a large community, it may not be such a huge loss compared to Facebook
The Social media moves made by Africell come off as unprofessional and trying too hard. This makes it look like more of an inside job than one done by a professional PR and marketing agency.
The Africell Website
The Africell website is still under construction but Africell went ahead to change the logo on the current Orange website from Orange to Africell. The banner alone, a blog on the corporate website and a press conference would have been enough to kick-start the branding campaign. I will be discussing more on what they could have done better in the next blog post.
As a marketing and branding practitioner, I can tell you that Africell’s current strategy is not working and will most certainly not work. In order to rebrand successfully, Africell will have to hire a professional Marketing/PR firm to manage the transition successfully. They risk losing the few faithful clientele they have if they dont handle the rebranding carefully. In my next post, I will show you with case studies how Africell can and should handle the rebranding successfully.
