Not even!

I think the title of this post should actually be “Why Cell C’s marketing team should consider a career in sales”. Now, I’d imagine Trevor Noah (tw) to be a pretty smart guy, but to be sold into becoming the face of a widely considered struggling brand, they must have sold him the world. Not just in payment, but in the overall strategy going forward. And well done to them.

I don’t recall Cell C (tw) getting as much exposure as they have over the past few weeks, ever. It started off with praise and applause, then the ‘it was all a scam‘ fiasco when everyone (particularly journos who felt like their little feelings were hurt for being betrayed) slated the campaign at every opportunity. Now the logo story. When will it end? It probably has. And all Cell C can do from here is improve, because they are, essentially, starting from the bottom. And I have a feeling that they will.

Why? Because what the’ve done is completely polarise themselves to the market. You get the people who love what they’ve done, and the people who absolutely hate it. Both sides have the same amount of interest in waiting for what they’ll do next, and both sides are so passionate about their standpoints that they will vehemently argue over any platform, live or online, to try and prove their point. The result: A conversation about the brand. Awesome. So now Cell C has the whole country focussing on their next move, and when you have that much pressure to perform, you work your ass off to make it happen.

On the other side though, what if they don’t? What if this all came too suddenly, they’re not prepared for it, and Cell C loses everything? What does this mean for their new CEO?

Trevor has become the face, the captain of this huge faceless ship. It’s a lot easier for us to blame individuals when things go wrong, because shouting at a large cold building never helped anydoby. It’s exactly what they wanted to achieve with the new campaign: Speak to an individual (Trevor) and he’ll sort you out. People buy in to that. But it has it’s disadvantages too.

Bottom line: If the brand you advocate goes down, you’re going down with them. It’s the captain’s duty. Let’s just hope the powers that be (unfortunately I don’t think Trevor is one of them) can steer this ship past the iceberg and sail it to greener pastures.

“While the 4 little piggies were engrossed in foosball, the big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the plane.”

From one baldy to another. Too awesome. You’re a legend, bro.

Here’s where this becomes a problem.

Last week I bought an official iPhone, it was faulty out of the box (constantly displaying ‘no service’ messages). We took it to Vodacare and they admitted that the problem was common and that they would replace the phone. However, they said that it would take a week as they want to send my phone in to their workshop.

That’s the first WTF?!

This is no longer my problem, a common fault, on a brand new phone, replace it and deal with your issues later. This is also in violation of Apple’s warranty.

However nice guys that we are, we said that would be fine, provided we get a suitable loan unit. They said that the best that they could do was a low-end call only handheld.

That’s the second WTF?!

When they sold me an iPhone, they sold me a device that manages many aspects of my life. As people that deal with me a lot know, phone calls probably account for 10% of my usage, the balance being email, IM, iPod, PDA, and, ummm, twitter. This is what they need to replace.

The game has changed, phone’s are so much more than phones. The networks that sell these devices need to wake up and stay with the times….

…and I want a new, err, phone…!

…when we had a president…!

South Africa – The Good News, sponsored by FNB, is a website dedicated to bringing you all the latest, local, good news. I’m guessing they won’t be posting as many posts as some of the other news sites, as people tend to be hooked towards bad news more than good, but it’s awesome to see some people bringing you the positive stuff.

The site also offers some Fast Facts and Quick Stats about South Africa, all, as you can imagine, positive.

Haha! Real story here.

Hardly surprising really when you consider the state of the economy and the 15% interest rate raping…!

1. A meeting was held with Jacob Zuma and the Forum of Black Journalists. All white journalists were asked to leave the meeting.

2. When 2 non-white journalists stood up and left the meeting along with the whiteys, they were called ‘coconuts‘.

Okay, I understand the fact that a Forum of Black Journalists will not consist of any white folk, but a meeting held with the soon-to-be-president of this country, who has plenty of contempt for press freedom and claiming the media are ‘minority voices out of tune with the majority in the country’, should, in my opinion, be allowed to be viewed ad documented by all journalists, regardless of race.

Something just doesn’t seem right. Imagine Helen Zille held a press conference for only white journalists, the shit would hit the fan instantly. Racial discrimination, either way, is not only against the constitution, but it’s also just nasty.

I’m still not fully sure how I feel about this, all I know is that something is dodgy, and with Zuma’s dodgy past, I don’t think I’m far from right.