ORANGE Botswana’s YimmiWeee! Vs PEP CELL South Africa’s Iyoh!

Botswana’s cellphone network company Orange recently started their YimmiWeee campaign. It’s a series of TV, billboard, and print adverts that are supposed to communicate the Orange rewards programme. From what I get from the adverts, Orange surprises its customers with rewards when they least expect it. I’m not an Orange subscriber so I don’t really know, but I think these rewards include airtime, freebies, and other prizes like cellphones and stuff.

Basically, in all the adverts there’s this bored looking individually sitting around at work, home or whatever. Then we hear footsteps, to indicate that someone is coming, or something is brewing. We then  see this lady draped in very colourful attire (with shades of orange of course) entering the room bearing gifts. Upon seeing this, this bored looking individual jumps up excitedly and screams out “YIMMIWEEE!” (which is what most Batswana cry out when they are surprised) and starts doing some sort of celebratory dance with this lady.

This woman represents ORANGE. Their message is “stick with orange and you will reap the rewards”. Which is great, because we all want a network provider that will keep rewarding us for sticking with them. It’s a good effort by Orange. I want to change to Orange now, it’s just that I hate changing numbers. Bathong, when are you bringing sim-swap to Botswana?!! Aah! I feel that my current service provider’s just robbing me waitse! As a cellphone user, you are not supposed to feel that way.

But there’s another advert I’ve been seeing in the SABCs that has the same concept. Instead of the customers screaming out “YimmiWeee” they go “Iyoh”. “Iyoh” is South Africa’s own “YimmiWeee”. Although we do say “Iyoh” here in Botswana, one could say, for us, the other phrase is more dramatic. I started seeing the BTV one first so could it be that Pep Cell copied Orange? I don’t know, for me that’s a little hard to believe, seeing as we’re always “borrowing” their ideas.