Safaricom Becomes Eliud Kipchoge’s Ambassador in Successful Historic Fete

By
George Kamau
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Early this week, Safaricom had begun teasing about its new logo for its mobile money service, M-PESA which currently has over 26 million users and has been integrated with tens of financial products. It was a selection of four logos that had users conflicted. We now know there was more to it than what meets the eye.mpesa

Two days later, Kenya’s biggest carrier rebranded its mobile product at a time Eliud Kipchoge was about to break a fete that hasn’t been achieved yet. He was going to finish a full marathon in under 2 hours in Vienna – a world’s first.

Safaricom decided to partner with the renowned athlete as he embarked on the INEOS 1:59 challenge by making him the M-PESA brand ambassador. As their M-PESA brand ambassador, Eliud was to help take Safaricom’s brand to more people across the world.


Kipchoge made for a befitting ambassador for M-PESA Global service, which now enables anyone to send or receive money through M-PESA, anywhere in the world.

To show their commitment and respect to the icon, Safaricom rebranded their M-PESA logo.  The new logo will have five letters spelling Kipchoge’s first name, “Eliud” and the numbers “1:59” to denote the challenge. Safaricom also took this opportunity to support the great marathoner in his to attempt to run a full marathon in 1 hour and 59 minutes and to equally empower Kenyans in supporting Kipchoge.

Safaricom gave Kenyans the chance to watch the marathon from 8 AM to 4 PM. The race was live-streamed on YouTube and was free for Safaricom users who took advantage of the bundle by dialling *159# and subscribers got the promotion bundle that gave them free 1.59 GB YouTube bundle that is valid till midnight.

In offering this bundle, Safaricom was also putting itself to task as the telco was going to not only connect its more than 31m subscribers but connect them at the same time streaming live video in good quality and it managed to do that showing that proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Earlier today, Eliud Kipchoge broke the record by running a 42-kilometre marathon in 1 hour 59 minutes 40seconds(1:59:40.2.)

Safaricom knew that Eliud’s challenge was going to be a super-human fete that’ll take great talent and effort to even accomplish and Safaricom not only went beyond having Kipchoge as their M-PESA ambassador but equally becoming his ambassador. This means Safaricom is now Eliud Kipchoge’s ambassador.

He got celebrated in Kenya and across the globe.

The Eliud 159 Hashtag Emoji

If you were following the challenge on Twitter, you might have seen the #Eliud159 Hashtag with the emoji next to it and #Kipchoge159 and #NoHumanIsLimited hashatags

The Eliud 159 Emoji on Twitter associated with #Eliud159 and #Kipchoge159 and #NoHumanIsLimited achieved over 10.3 Billion impressions worldwide from a total of 198K tweets as at the time of publishing.

Most influential accounts and personalities included Eliud Kipchoge, Safaricom PLC, Man City, IAAF, Droid, Rio Ferdinand, BBC Sport and BBC Africa.


The conversation around the hashtag had a positive sentiment of 46% and 3% negative with 57% on iOS, 70% on android and 88% on desktop and laptops which adds to over 100% since some people use multiple devices.

It is worth noting that over 3M Safaricom customers redeemed the free Youtube bundle which is still valid till midnight. If I were you, I would go to our YouTube channel and binge-watch our latest videos.


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George Kamau
I brunch on consumer tech | first.last at techweez dot com

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