Airtel Data is Life, 444 Advert Campaigns Rake Awards

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

When it comes to advertising campaigns in Nigeria, especially among the leading telecommunications companies, Airtel Nigeria seems to be the king.

Most of its advert campaigns have always been national anthems and this has made mobile phone users subscribe to their services, including voice calls and data.

Last year, at the Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival Awards (LAIF), Airtel won a total of 20 awards and the organisers described this feat as unprecedented.

LAIF is an award platform designed to recognise creative excellence as well as promote excellence in the field of advertising and marketing communications.

At the event, Airtel clinched seven Gold, six Silver, six Bronze and the most prestigious Grand Prix through its Data is Life advertising campaign.

The 444 campaign earned it three Gold awards in the Bank, Investment and Other Financial Communication award’s category and also three Gold in the Telecom Product/Services award category. The Airtel’s ‘Data is Life’ (DIL) campaign was also adjudged a Gold.

Airtel’s advertising campaign also won nine awards, earlier last year, at the Pitcher’s Awards, taking the company’s total awards for advertising campaigns in 2020 to 29, the most it has earned in any year.

The Pitcher Awards is widely considered as one of the most valuable and internationally respected accolades for creative work coming out of Africa.

It started as an annual celebration of creativity in West Africa, but beginning with the 2020 edition, the scope has now widened to include all work created, released or implemented anywhere on the African continent in line with its vision to provide the true and authentic benchmark for African creative excellence.

The CEO of Airtel Nigeria, Mr Segun Ogunsanya, while commenting on this feat, dedicated the awards to the company’s over 50 million customers across Nigeria, noting that Airtel will not rest on its laurels and will continue to go the extra mile in connecting and bonding emotionally with all its stakeholders through compelling, relevant, bespoke and inspiring narratives.

It would be recalled that Airtel Nigeria was recently recognised for its efforts in storytelling and PR innovation at the 5th edition of the Lagos Public Relations and Industry Gala (LaPRIGA), a prominent communications industry event at the instance of the Lagos Chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.

The Corporate Communications Department of Airtel Nigeria was also awarded the ‘Best Corporate Communications Team’ in Africa by the prestigious Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Responsibility Awards (SERAs), a prominent award platform designed to celebrate excellence in the practice of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Africa.

Airtel Nigeria’s CEO was also recently named the ‘Telecoms CEO of the Year’ by telecoms stakeholders under the banner of Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) while the company’s Corporate Communications/CSR Director, Mr Emeka Oparah and its Information Technology Director, Seun Solanke were recently named Corporate Communications Practitioner of the Year and IT Director of the Year by LaPRIGA and the CIO Awards, respectively.

ATCON also awarded Airtel Nigeria the ‘Best Customer Service Operator 2020’ at the ATCON/NTITA award, which held in November 2020.