If you haven’t already heard; this is Rob, the British broadcaster that said some nice things about Uganda following Peruth Chemutai’s gold medal at the Olympics in Japan. Not only did he praise Uganda’s great beauty—just before Peruth took to the podium to receive her medal—he also spoke of how extremely friendly we, the people, are. I must admit, that was heartwarming to hear, even though deep down we all know there’s more things wrong than right in UG.
In early 2005, the Uganda Tourism Board forked out at least US$1m to CNN to boost the country’s image abroad.
Compared to what we would be billed for having a celebrity, say, Kanye West, as our brand ambassador for the same period as the CNN ad was, that figure is arguably small. Yet the results would be way better with a celebrity than going through a media house.
With this sort of thing, it’s my view that TV ads are efficient but not effective, cos people identify better with characters. That’s why we must capitalize on personalities more than anything else.
For example, Rob is an international media personality and his admiration for Uganda is unquestionable. It didn’t start last evening. You could hear it in the tone of his voice. As a matter of fact, he says that the yellow Uganda Jersey (see pic) is his favorite top to wear whenever he’s going out to train or run.
You can only imagine how many people in his circles he has told about us, or how many of his followers got to know of Uganda through him. This man is a true ambassador and, not only should we swiftly clutch at him, I think he should be awarded a honorarium.
If we could identify people like these in various spheres of influence and in different parts of the world, I believe our brand would explode in a short time.
HOWEVER! We have mastered the terrible habit of making one step forward and three backwards. There’s a labyrinth of things that are awfully wrong around here, and most revolve around the fact that we have such a massive number of thugs disguised as leaders and politicians.
Rob Walker’s beautiful and fervent remark will be of no value if we don’t clean up our image here at home. If the first thing someone sees when they punch ‘Uganda’ into the Google search bar are images of soldiers and police mauling citizens, it’s a no-brainer that they’ll most likely reconsider visiting.
Also, even when we have the capacity, we barely take care of our wonderful athletes—perhaps the only people that have been consistently shining for us on the global arena! It’s really sad!
That notwithstanding, great thanks to Rob for throwing in a word for us!
