Essar telecom recently launched a promotion called Za Ziada, which bears a degree of similarity with a reward scheme run, by Telkom Kenya. Telkom Kenya has been running its Ziada customer royalty program for subscribers on its Orange mobile network for more than a year. A week ago, Essar Telecom Kenya – which runs the Yu brand — launched a consumer promotion dubbed Za Ziada. The promotion, the firm said, would give customers up to 50 percent extra talk-time upon reloading their phones with different denomination scratch cards. The move comes as Kenyan telecom companies continue to battle for customers and a number of leaders have said the move borders on unethical practice. “We had our product in the market first and the competition needs to respect that and get more creative,” Chief Executive Telkom Kenya Mickael Ghossein told Financial Journal. “I will be writing to Essar Telecom Kenya to complain about the issue and ask them to stop using the word in their promotions.” He added that Essar had broken the advertising code of ethics that prohibits use of competitor words and slogans in advertising and marketing. BM
