Tag: Brand Refresh
MTN, in partnership with ayoba, Africa’s Super App, has reached an exciting 20 million monthly active users on 5th of December 2022. This represents growth of 100% compared to the 10 million monthly active users recorded at the same time last year.
“We celebrate this milestone and are pleased that, through ayoba, we are able to provide accessible communications, so that millions of people across our markets can enjoy the benefits of a modern connected life”, says MTN Group Chief Operating Officer, Jens Schulte-Bockum.
ayoba is available globally with a focus on the African continent. Key markets in MTN’s footprint include Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda and The Republic of Congo, giving ayoba a strong footprint across Africa.
ayoba was also in the news recently when it was voted “Top Innovative Technology and Telecom Product of the Year” at the Ghana National Communications Awards in November 2022.
ayoba CEO Burak Akinci said: “It has been an exciting year. Providing the best experience to our users has always been our top priority and we are working very hard to improve our service everyday. It is a pleasure to see that our efforts are well received and appreciated by our users all around Africa.
“This achievement is the result of listening to our users, understanding their needs and working on multiple aspects of our platform to serve them better. We would like to thank our users who never fail to provide feedback and insightful input.
“We will continue to develop what is a robust messaging service in ayoba, that continues to offer new functionalities, free music service that has grown to millions of streams, high quality games, a wide range of channels with curated local content, and hundreds of new MicroApps”
Strong engagement, growth in 2022 and diversity of content
ayoba has shown immense growth across all verticals this year. Leading the charge is the music streaming service, with its focus on local content and growth in streams of 174% in 2022. In terms of engagement, our users viewed 225 million cards across 150 channels on a variety of topics led by football updates, tech and entertainment news, food and fashion, rugby and other sports.
Our French language content was led by influencer Muriel Blanche and Adamant Media, with francophone comedy. In 2022, we launched three new Arabic channels providing growth in content for markets like Sudan, covering entrepreneurship, football and other issues.
In December 2022, the year on year growth for messaging was 125% (messages sent), games by 208% (plays) and MicroApps by 322% (sessions). Ayoba users posted a 85 million stories, updating their friends and family on their activities and interests.
“This is a phenomenal endorsement of our ‘Made in Africa for the World’ strategy” continued Akinci. “We believe in the vast potential of African digital talent and do our best to support them, from training to hackathons and accelerator programmes. 2023 will be even more exciting with all the new features and services we plan to introduce to make the ayoba platform the gateway to the digital economy for start-ups across different markets in Africa.
ayoba is an application open to all networks developed as a partnership initiative with MTN. ayoba users receive free daily data in participating markets. The platform is part of MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy, which targets 100 million monthly active users by 2025.
10 reasons to use ayoba:
1. FREE TO USE: ayoba is free to use – including all of our amazing features! You need data to get onto the internet, but if you are on the MTN network in selected countries, you will get free data every day to use the app.
2. CHAT AND CALL NOW: Instantly send and receive text and voice messages, voice notes, as well as voice and video calls with any of your contacts. Please note that Voice and Video call are subject to standard data charges for all users.
3. SECURE: End-to-end encryption means that messages in a conversation cannot be read by anyone else.
4. FIND YOUR FRIENDS: Use your existing address book to quickly and easily connect with your contacts.
5. CHAT WITH EVERYONE: Send SMS text messages to anyone in your contact list, regardless of whether they’ve installed ayoba or not. If the friend you send to does not have the app, the message will be delivered by SMS. They can respond by SMS and it will come back into your app. This is a unique technology.
6. GROUP CHAT: The more the merrier! Set up group chats to easily communicate with friends and family in a single chat.
7. SHARING IS CARING: Share videos, images, audio, and other files with your contacts.
8. LET’S MEET: Share your real-time location with your ayoba contacts.
9. CHANNELS: Free access to consume all content across various categories ranging from news, sports, fashion, music, education to entertainment and much more, all within the ayoba app. All of our channels are Africa centric – such as the Black Star channel for Ghana, Scrolla Africa in IsiZulu, Yoruba & Hausa, Pulse Channels for Nigeria and Ghana covering business news, current affairs and entertainment; with over 20 artist channels highlighting African musicians.
10. LISTEN AND PLAY: Our free music service allows users to listen to trending songs in our fantastic playlists, featuring the best of local and international music. We have games that you can play as well, such as Subway Surfers, CR7 Strike, Car Rush Spore Hunter, BattleShip, Pinball, Solitaire and more. New content is added every day.
MTN Group today released the second instalment of its brand refresh with the ‘Voice’ brand film that highlights how a simple ingredient of life, in this case your voice, can impact and change the way people see the world, and inspire progress.
In February, MTN launched its new logo and brand campaign to anchor its strategy, Ambition 2025, to build leading digital solutions that enable Africa’s progress across the telecom, fintech, infrastructure, API and content and messaging ecosystem.
The “What are we doing today?” campaign is driven by the insight that all progress comes from action and that the energy and optimism of Africa’s people together with MTN’s commitment to enabling Africa’s digital progress, will contribute to the progress of consumers, countries and ultimately, the African continent.
Africa is a continent with significant potential and MTN is intent in playing its part in harnessing this potential by bringing relevant solutions to consumers that enable digital and financial inclusion and help them progress in their daily lives.
“Africa’s youth are at the core of this potential and progress, and our brand refresh centres on them as they hold the future in their hands. With the ‘Voice’ brand film, we hope to inspire in them that their voices matter, and to use the power of their voice to impact positive change and advance the progress of everyone on the continent,” said Bernice Samuels, Executive for Marketing.
As an extension of the release of the ‘Voice’ brand film, MTN Group has partnered with TBTM Studios to sponsor Season 3 of the ‘The Mic: Africa’ an interactive talent search programme aimed at empowering and uncovering talented youth across the continent. This production is an embodiment of MTN’s commitment to finding and giving “do-ers” from across Africa an opportunity to use their voice to respond to the invitation of ‘’What are we doing today?’’ The public will be able to view The Mic: Africa on the Premium Free TV app via ayoba, the Superapp, taking Africa by storm.
MTN is looking forward to revealing the details of the involvement and association with this exciting production in the next few weeks.
MTN Group today unveiled its evolved visual identity, articulating the context behind the logo many have seen since 16 February 2022. It is just the second brand overhaul since the Group was founded in 1994. Back in 2004, the changes made to the brand resulted in MTN taking ownership of the colour yellow that is now synonymous with MTN. Importantly it also helped to elevate the brand to where it is today, recognised as the most valuable in Africa.
The brand is an extension and visual representation of the Group’s refreshed strategy, dubbed Ambition 2025 and premised on Leading digital solutions for Africa’s progress. Through the delivery of this strategy, MTN aims to accelerate growth by building the largest and most valuable platform businesses and driving its industry leading connectivity operations.
“Africa is a continent with enormous opportunity and energy,” says MTN Group President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita. “We want to play our part in harnessing her potential and supporting her progress by driving digital and financial inclusion. It is a well-known fact that the youth are central to achieving this potential. Whilst we remain focussed on all our customers and stakeholders, our brand evolution demonstrates an enhanced focus on the youth.”
The new brand identity is modern, simple, bold, and digitally dynamic. It kicks off with a provocative and simple question, “What are we doing today?” With a clear and concise brand strategy that Opportunity + Energy = Progress, MTN understands that to truly unlock the full benefits and potential of the digital world people require a combination of drive, progressive thinking, and the right tools.
This rebrand highlights MTN’s commitment to continuously evolve and explore innovative initiatives that provide value to all our stakeholders. A pioneer of progress from the beginning, MTN looks to drive this progress further through action and doing. In delivering its vision, MTN aims to drive a positive shift in Africa and harness the continent’s boundless opportunity.
“Africa is never still. True progress can only be realised by ‘doing’,” says Bernice Samuels, MTN Group Executive for Marketing. “It is off this insight that we launch our new positioning by challenging, celebrating and providing tools for doers because when individuals, communities and countries progress, so too does Africa.”
MTN Group’s Ambition 2025, has ushered in a new look that is aligned with our strategic intent to provide digital solutions to support Africa’s progress underpinned by one simple, consistent, yet striking brand.
Our commitment and focus to accelerate Africa’s progress sees MTN revealing a refreshed brand identity and campaign from 27 February. The campaign is inspired by an insight that doing is a bridge between can and done, because all progress comes from action.
