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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Obongo Mail

From Sugabelly's blog

Remember iKobo
Well meet ObongoMail.

Yeah. They really never learn.

Advertising 101: Your consumers or potential consumers MUST be able to IDENTIFY with the models using the product in the ad in some key way. This will then enable them to envision themselves IN PLACE of the model using the product.

How many Nigerians do you know that look like this?




I am so sick of Nigerian companies that feel the need to market their products and services using White people. Newsflash!!! Nigeria is 99.9% black. Unless perhaps they are really targeting the five white people in Nigeria. If that is the case I apologize for calling them out, but as long as what they wrote there is market to MILLIONS in Nigeria, then it is only logical to assume that they are talking about Nigerians since the only group of people that number up to even one million in Nigeria are actual Nigerians.

So excuse me while I feel the intense desire to capture the owner of Obongo mail and bongo his or her head.

Goodness, it is not hard. This is the FIRST thing they teach you in business school. It is freaking common sense. This is like trying to market horseshoes to a horse using a crocodile as your demonstration model. I am sick of all these STUPID Nigerian companies that are so in love with Caucasians and think that they are so much better than Nigerians that they feel the need to appeal as much as possible to Caucasian sensibilities when the net worth of all the Caucasians in Nigeria combined can't even make any kind of significant dent in Nigeria's GNI.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Caucasians but there IS something wrong with stupid Nigerians and the companies they own not valuing their fellow Nigerians enough to even have the decency to market us a good or service using models that actually look like us.

How can you expect me to use ObongoMail which you claim is for Nigerians when you don't even have the common courtesy to employ a Nigerian model so that I can actually envision myself using your service? Like seriously, who the hell do these companies think they're marketing their stuff to?

Call it whatever you want, if you are a Nigerian company or if you are a company targeting Nigerians and you cannot respect Nigerians enough to use Nigerian (or at the very least Black) models in your marketing campaigns targeting Nigerians then I don't care if you have the best widget in the world that you are selling, if you are a Nigerian company and you cannot be proudly Nigerian then you will not see a kobo of my money. Nigerians are just as good as caucasians, and if you can employ a caucasian model to market in America or Europe then you sure as hell can employ a Nigerian model to market to Nigerians. Otherwise you can keep your bloody service and Nigerians will pay someone who respects us.

Nonsense and Ingredient



Original Post

*This post was done from my phone so excuse me if this comes out iffy. Necessary edits will be done when i get close to a computer.

10 comments:

  1. I totally agree that Nigerian companies should use Nigerian/Black models on their sites.However, I think this is just poor judgment on the part of the person who built the website as I'm absolutely sure they just used the first stock photo they could find. I doubt they specifically hired a Caucasian model. Still, the company owner should av should small brain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is ecommerce guys. Relax! How do you know it's a Nigerian company?
    Ecommerce is about the value of the service. Nobody buys from you because you put a black or white face on your site.
    Maybe you should ask Yahoo to put a Nigeria face on their web site because 10million people have Yahoo accounts. Rookies

    ReplyDelete
  3. @anon
    dude, what the fuck are you on about?

    ReplyDelete
  4. This blog is full of shit
    There is not a single Nigerian on the board of Ikobo anymore!. This is business not blogosphere!
    Investors dont give a monkey about your patrotism nonsense!

    You guys were in diapers when the ecommerce started. Watch and learn instead of jumping!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I use obongomail.com sms service and it works!
    This company actually invested in their web site and are now offering Nigerians a service where it would otherwise be difficult to get anywhere. Unlike you running off a blog.com domain. Be very, very careful with your cheap shots.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @ ecommerce anon

    how does ecommerce explain the fuckery being discussed?

    @ other anon

    the fact they invested in their website means jack squat to me. how much is it? $10

    ReplyDelete
  7. If you are looking for traffic on your pseudo web site. Come up with something of value. Use your brain for once. Bye

    ReplyDelete
  8. sure dude

    you can stop visiting the blog any minute now.

    thanks for playing

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Anonymous:

    You're either a random idiot or you own or work for Obongo mail.

    Either way, your stupidity has reached atmospheric levels.

    It is obvious that YOU know NOTHING about e-commerce or about online marketing or you would have understood the point of this post.

    Nobody is questioning the value or quality of Obongo Mail's service. What we are questioning is the wisdom of using a white model as the face of a company targeted to Nigerians (who, in case you did not realise, are BLACK).

    And of course we are operating off a "Blogger" domain. We are a BLOG.

    Stop being an idiot and a git and use your brain to re-read the post. That's what that mushy grey mass in your head is there for.

    ReplyDelete