Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria,
Steven Evans, yesterday described the decision of one of the brand’s artiste,
Afeez Oyetoro, popularly known as Saka, to dump its competitor and acclaimed
“dominant operator,” MTN, as a “mistake.”
Evans disclosed this at an interactive session with reporters on
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) at Raddison Blue Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
He said Saka’s decision was a mistake, arguing that it is not uncommon for
people to make mistakes once in a while in life.
“Saka made a mistake. Sometimes in life, people make mistakes.
He is still coming back,” he quipped without further explanation.
He was responding to a question bothering on whether the telco
will re-examine its policy of not fully converting its artiste to brand
ambassadors considering its experience with Saka.
Sources close to the artiste alleged that his promoters had
passionately appealed to Etisalat to convert him to its ‘brand ambassador’
after using him for the activation of several ad campaigns that recorded
resounding successes but the mobile operator turned deaf ears to these appeals.
The source said it made the suggestion to the telco several times without
success, lamenting that rather than weigh the option on altar of reasoning, Etisalat
preferred to pay him between N200,000 and N250,000 for each campaign and let
him go.
The source said when MTN dangled the carrot of N20 million at
Saka, he did not wait for any further consultation before jumping at the offer.
Speaking on the milestones the telco has achieved as a result of
the launch of the MNP in the country, Evans said several hundreds of
subscribers have joined the Etisalat network because of the high quality of
services and innovative products it offers its customers. Added to this is the
lifting of the blanket ban the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) earlier
placed on promotions and lotteries that ride on the network of all the
operators. Etisalat and two other operators were recently given the clean bill
of health to do promo and lotteries on the network. The CEO said the
development has enhanced its subscriber growth tremendously, adding that
Easycliq, its flagship product, now has between 8 and 9 million subscribers.
He said the subscriber figures of Etisalat now oscillates
between 15 and 16 million, adding that it has put in place infrastructure that
will successfully accommodate 20 million subscribers without any hiccup. He
disclosed that the telco was also investing massively on 3G to redefine end
user experience in data services across the country.
Reeling out statistics from the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC), he disclosed that in every department of the Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) set by the regulator, Etisalat overshot threshold.
Source: The Nation
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