MTN valentine wish to Airtel sparks mixed reactions

By Oghale Mafuru

Telecom giant, MTN Nigeria has left tongues wagging following its Valentine creative greetings released in the early hours of today addressed to Airtel Nigeria, a competing brand.

The creative design which was posted on the company’s Instagram handle, featured two love-shaped balloons with colours, yellow and red, held together by a tiny string at the bottom. The caption that followed was “Love is in the air. Happy Valentine’s Day @airtelnigeria.

While this show of love is widely acclaimed to be in the spirit of the season, it has elicited some suspicion of possible merger, acquisition or partnership as the love expression was only addressed to Airtel, when there are other players in telecommunications industry like Globacom and 9mobile.

Some of the reactions on Instagram are aniikewiththe vibe said: “Okay this is cute, not gonna lie”.

“Hmmmm so my network provider MTN too has fallen in love with AIRTEL. God wen” said gensmoki

“Airtel and MTN, oh wow, something is cooking” according to debra_voicing

Another Instagram user queried “Why only Airtel? What about the other networks?

Statistics from the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC shows that as at December 2022, MTN as the leading telco brand in Nigeria had a total number of 89,016,678 representing 40.08 percent market share, followed by Globacom with 60,290,012 representing 27.13%, Airtel with 60,065,904 representing 27.03 and 9mobile with 12,852,706 representing 5.78%.

With the two telecommunication companies signing up to the 5th Generation, 5G network, there are projections that it will improve on the numbers of subscribers this year.

Meanwhile, the leading telco brands left no stone unturned to express love to their teeming consumers. While MTN came up with impressive love quotes and taglines to excite subscribers, Airtel started “AirtelLoveNite” Challenge for couples. Winners’ prize is either a dinner experience or a shopping voucher.

LEAVE A COMMENT

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment

    No comments found.