Bonyeza Ushinde is meant for those mobile phone users with non touch phones. Bonyeza is a Swahili word that means press. You don’t press touch smartphones, you touch the. And now with that irrelevant piece of information, I present my case.
Safaricom, Kenya’s largest Mobile Network Operator is currently running a countrywide promotion called “Bonyeza Ushinde na Safaricom” which is quite a clever ploy at marketing. The way this works, is that no matter whether you are right or wrong, you still get points for participating, albeit half of what you get when you win. Safaricom limits the number of questions you can answer to 5, so you wont be depleting your airtime in a day trying to win that million.
I have also engaged in it previously as a way to see how it works. I will leave the part where winning isn’t something no-one wouldn’t love. Safaricom also ensures that they don’t run short of nice words to participants to the campaign as you participate, encouragement and convincing is in plenty.
But that’s less than half of it.
The questions that Safaricom is asking for users to answer are where the meat is. They ask basic questions about Safaricom that are not specifically geared towards seeing how much the user knows (although they could collect that data too), but also as a way to ensure subscribers know these things.
Search engines results will confirm this. Blogger Mwirigi of Mulikamwizi happened to have covered the Bonyeza Ushinde na Safaricom promotion earlier on. His post is somehow like a how-to on the campaign and details you need to know. But his analytics are what tell the story. The search terms that bring users to the articles are what’s interesting. Users are searching for terms related to the questions being asked in the campaign by Safaricom.
So basically Safaricom is achieving two things by running the campaign, having users stuck to their phones searching for information about Safaricom and also having some airtime as the winners get announced. Oh, and creating a few millionaires.
