Haaland, Saka, Six Others Nominated For Young Player of the Season

 

Eight young footballers have been shortlisted for this year's Premier League Young Player of the Season award.

 

Newcastle’s Sven Botman, 23, has made the list as a young defender who has helped his team in their quest for the top four has 10 clean sheets in 33 appearances.

 

Saka, Porting To MTN And The Real Logic

An interesting debate has been raging on in the communication and advertising sub-sectors in the last couple of weeks. It was stirred by the sudden and dramatic switch of camps by artiste Hafeez Oyetoro, alias Saka, from Etisalat to MTN. This controversy is similar to the occasional hullabaloo that always accompanied the defecting of a notable Nigerian political figure from one political party to another.

‘Saka’ is a popular character that was specially created to market Etisalat by its ad agency, and was highly successful in that regard...

But quite suddenly, on the heels of the Nigerian Communications Commission’s Mobile Number Portability campaign recently, MTN cleverly got him to “port go” and thus he deserted Etisalat in a manner that seems to have left a sour taste in the mouths of not just some people in the advertising world but also many observers.

Yet, the question remains whether any real breach of professional ethics had been committed by either the artiste or MTN as a company, given the fact that ‘Saka’ is believed to have had no written or verifiable contractual accord with Etisalat. The lessons that could be drawn from this include: (a) the need for written contractual understanding or agreement to seal important business relationships between an artiste and his employer.

(b) The need to remunerate artistes adequately so that they would think twice in the face of tempting offers by competitors.

(c) The need to adopt impact measurement as a vital component of any major or successful campaign and

(d) The need to avoid the temptation to underrate any artiste because in a dynamic world like advertising, the least expected model may prove the ultimate ambassador of a brand.

But, above everything else, the dramatic “porting” of Saka and its impact so far on the latter’s portability campaign and the obvious shock and tremor it has left in the other camp count as a big plus for artistes generally who may henceforth no longer be taken for granted by those who hire them.

Nevertheless, having made great waves in so short a period, not a few observers believe that Saka’s time was really up, because any further campaign on the side of the same brand would certainly be affected by the Law of Diminishing Returns.

All in all, one should salute the regulatory wisdom of the NCC for wittingly or otherwise affording Nigerians an opportunity to let off steam and rewind via a veritable dialogue or discourse as an unexpected result of the introduction of the long-awaited Mobile Number Portability campaign.