“Can I see your driver’s license and fire extinguisher, please?”
Fire extinguisher? Rose and I were driving out to Fantem, a postcard African village of thatched-roof huts on Lake Volta, where a fisherman had promised us some fresh tilapia and duck eggs. The police roadblock was in the usual market-day location just outside Koforidua, and I was used to slowing down and waving as the police eyed our registration and insurance stickers on the windshield. But today’s demand for a fire extinguisher was new—or rather a new variation on the too-familiar police shakedown. It begins with a citation for some obscure infraction. You will have to go to the police station, or to a judge in a distant town. All of this will take time. For a small consideration the matter can be settled right now.
As the young officer wrote me up, I told him, “I was not aware I needed a fire extinguisher,” imagining that in the unlikely event my car were to immolate, I would leap out and run before it exploded. But the law was hardly about safety or logic. Perhaps some importer of fire extinguishers was on friendly terms with the government; a crackdown on missing extinguishers (who knew?) would drive business. The policeman who pulled me over was threatening to withhold my international driver’s license until a court date. I was already without a passport, at that time still in the bureaucratic labyrinth of a visa extension. My license was my last proof of identification.
I called Whit while Rose talked to the cop in Twi. “Sit tight,” said Whit. “We’re on our way.”
Rose and the cop kept on talking amiably; he was clearly curious about our business. Soon Rose was holding up a battery and launching into the spiel, which I could almost recite in Twi at that point. Soon they were laughing about something. Then the cop turned to me.
“Your woman has spoken for you,” he announced in English. It was meant as an insult: a man who needs a woman to get out of trouble is not a real man. And by calling Rose “my woman,” he was, I think, implying that I was one of those lecherous Westerners who come to Africa for all the wrong reasons. But it was all sticks and stones. He could have called me a child molester as long as he gave me back my international driver’s license.
“I will tear up this ticket,” said the officer, “but you must pay for the paper.”
Ah, the paper! I was ready to hand him a ten-cedi note and be done with it, but Rose stepped in and negotiated the payment down to five cedis (about $3.50). He handed back my license, and we were off to get fish and eggs. I called Whit: “We’re in the clear. See you this afternoon. Get a fucking fire extinguisher.”
1. Branding Fatigue
In mid-September of 2009 we got the Tata “branded,” in the current business lingo—that is, painted Burro green with the Burro logo and slogans affixed to it in black self-adhesive vinyl (known in the trade as SAV). Branding, or “impact advertising,” is pretty much what marketing is all about in Ghana; the country’s low literacy rate and dozens of languages make it a challenge to convey information about your product. TV commercials have limited reach, since relatively few people own sets (although radio is popular). When you consider that Ghanaians spend virtually all of their waking hours outdoors (their tiny huts and houses, meant for sleeping, are cramped and stuffy by day), it’s not surprising that outdoor advertising is the primary marketing space.
Commercial signage is everywhere; on the low end are hand-painted shop signs created by relatively skilled artisans, with studios on seemingly every block. These colorful kitsch masterpieces are designed for illiterate customers and illustrated with representations of the wares for sale—shoes, fish—or bizarre interpretations of the services rendered, such as severed hands and feet to announce a manicurist’s shop. Many, perhaps most, small businesses in Ghana are named after seemingly irrelevant inspirational passages, such as the God Will Do Welding and Body Shop, Not I But Christ Fashion, Thank You Jesus Spare Parts, It Is Jesus Catering (“This is delicious, what is it?” “It is Jesus.”) and my favorite: the unfortunately named Never Say Die Until the Bones Are Rotting Fish Store. In his recent book The Masque of Africa, V. S. Naipaul succinctly described the proliferation of African Christian signage “as though religion here was like a business that met a desperate consumer need at all levels.”
In recent years, however, the Man from Galilee has faced stiff competition in naming rights from President Obama, a hero in Ghana and indeed most of sub-Saharan Africa. Now you can stay at the Obama Hotel in Accra while snacking on Obama Biscuits, a locally made sugar cookie that even appropriated the famous poster art by Shepard Fairey.
But the charming hand-painted business signs are merely the bottom warp in a tapestry of outdoor advertising dominated by big multinational impact campaigns. When Vodafone, the British mobile phone giant (45 percent owned by Verizon), bought Ghana’s state telephone company in early 2009, they literally painted the country red. Along roads from east to west and from the Atlantic to the Sahel, entire villages of adobe huts were brushed, seemingly overnight, in bright Vodafone red, punctuated by the company’s white apostrophe logo. Streetlights were draped in Vodafone banners, bridges transformed in red; even major landmarks, like Accra’s Nkrumah Circle, were co-opted by Vodafone flags and signs.
It’s not terribly hard to get your brand plastered across Ghana. Until recently, rural Ghanaians who lived along main roads were happy to let companies turn their huts into giant advertisements at no charge; the association with an “important” brand connoted status and was considered desirable—plus you got your house painted for free. “At first people were ridiculed for letting the companies paint their houses,” said Kevin, who used to work in promotions for Guinness, “but then it became fashionable.”
But as often happens with outdoor advertising, the branding of Ghana has devolved into an arms race. Today you can drive through villages that have been transformed into kaleidoscopic brand wars—every other home is either Vodafone red or the yellow of MTN, a mobile phone competitor and the largest carrier in Ghana; across the street are whole-house ads for Pómo tomato sauce (red and green) and Snappy peanut snacks (red, blue, and yellow). On the next block, Coke and Guinness duke it out in the beverage wars. (Besides its beer, Guinness owns the Malta soft drink brand.) Kevin told me that Ghanaians have started to show signs of branding fatigue and are no longer willing to offer up their homes as free billboards. Payments are increasingly common, especially in prime locations. And of course, companies pay towns and cities for the right to brand public spaces. These companies understand the importance of brand identity in Africa. Whit argued that brands matter even more to low-income consumers, precisely because they cannot afford to take chances on unknown products.
Yet despite the relentless branding of commodities like phone services and taste-alike beverages, the African retail segment is otherwise surprisingly under-branded; most consumer products, from housewares to appliances to clothing, are essentially generic and undifferentiated. Nobody, it seemed, was as focused as Whit on building a brand that would earn the trust and loyalty of low-income African consumers in products that are essential to them.
With revenue of some two hundred cedis a month, Whit was a long way from branding the countryside—not that he didn’t have dreams of seeing entire Ghanaian villages painted in Burro green. For now he’d have to settle for company T-shirts, shop posters, and branding the two vehicles, starting with the Tata.
Through Rose we had established a relationship with a company in Accra that specialized in orchestrating brand campaigns; basically they took care of the details involved in ordering clothing, signage, car branding, and any other impact promotions you needed. If you wanted to face-paint Ghanaian market women in the color of your brand, they could probably arrange it.
Or at least, say they could. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that what the company promoted best was itself. The outfit was run by a physically imposing man I’ll call Dave, a member of the Ga ethnic group of greater Accra. Perhaps because they are primarily an urban people, the Ga have a reput
ation among Ghanaians as being aggressive and in-your-face. They are the New Yorkers of Ghana. They talk fast. With his thick-rimmed glasses and shaved head, Dave certainly fit the physical bill of a Big Man not to be messed with; I have no doubt his intimidating image was carefully cultivated—branded, you could say. In fact, as testimonial to the importance of protecting your brand, Rose had stumbled upon Dave’s company by accident, its name confusingly similar to a far larger, better established, widely known competitor she thought she’d found when first meeting him.
At our first meeting in Burro’s Koforidua office, Dave could hardly sit still in his chair, so eager was he to share his brilliant ideas for taking Burro to the top. Whit wanted T-shirts; Dave talked about vests with lots of pockets for the batteries. Jan wanted to know what a public-address system for the truck would cost; Dave was already talking about composing a Burro jingle and hiring actors for radio ads. He was going ninety miles an hour, but he didn’t really understand the business yet. It was, in short, all talk, and not a lot of details at that.
Nevertheless, Jan managed to pin him down on a T-shirt order, and within a few days he had provided some paint samples (on twelve-inch-square metal plates) for branding the cars.
Burro’s green color was somewhat hard to reproduce, a concern known to Whit when originally adopting it. The Burro brand identity was developed under the direction of Michael Connell, Cranium’s former creative director, by the Los Angeles design firm Creable. To make a green that would really pop in print, the designers chose a Pantone spot color and specified two “hits” of the ink on a super bright white stock. If done properly, it looked great, popping vividly—almost neon. But it proved difficult to duplicate in Africa, where printers did not necessarily have the ability to match Pantone colors or to provide the correct coated paper stock. Even harder were clothing dyes and automobile paint tones because (at least in Africa) they were not as standardized as printer ink.
So it took a few weeks, but finally Dave managed to source T-shirt dye and car paint that Whit felt were close enough to move forward. We drove down to Accra on a Saturday to pick up the truck and the T-shirts, pulling in front of Dave’s office, in a neighborhood with the exquisitely colonial name of Asylum Down, right on time at two o’clock. The truck was nowhere in sight along the narrow street.
“Where is our truck?” Rose asked the receptionist, an attractive and slightly cross-eyed woman in her thirties. She sat behind a large desk in a cramped and cluttered foyer of the building. On one wall was a glass case displaying shirts branded with the colors and logos of perhaps a dozen multinational companies.
“It is still being washed,” she said. “Please wait.”
“But we called two hours ago and it was being washed,” said Rose. “That is quite a washing.”
“Please, wait,” she said again. “I will prepare the bill.”
She left and returned a few minutes later with an invoice. Rose looked at the bill and said, “This isn’t right. The shirts were supposed to cost five and a half cedis each, and you have billed us six cedis.”
The receptionist extended her hand and took the bill, then perused it. “Dave will be here soon,” she said.
“Can I look?” said Whit. He took the bill and turned to the second page. “Whoa! Six hundred twenty-eight cedis for the sound system?” He was referring to the charge for buying and installing the amp, microphone, and rooftop speakers. “On our pro forma, which I have here, Dave said that would cost a hundred and eighty cedis. I know he did call and say that he couldn’t get that system and the one he found would cost more. But I figured, like, ten or fifteen percent more. This is three hundred and fifty percent more! I’m sorry, but that’s unacceptable. I would expect a phone call for that much more.”
“That is what it cost,” said the woman blandly.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Whit. “But it’s not even close to what I agreed to pay. So maybe I’ll say just take the whole system out. I mean, I will talk to Dave when he gets here, but that’s just outrageous.”
Dave walked in, handshakes were made. Still no truck. “It’s on the way,” he said. “It looks fantastic.”
“We can’t wait to see it,” said Whit. “But Dave, I am concerned about the invoice.” He pointed to the audio system charges, comparing them to the estimate. “I’ll be honest with you, Dave. I don’t understand why you didn’t call me about this. I don’t like surprises in my business, and this is a very big surprise.”
Before Dave could respond, a worker came through the door, jangling the Tata keys. “It’s here,” said Dave. “Let’s go.”
We walked out to the street and beheld the Tata, which was now a very bright green. It was, indeed, very cool. We walked around it, inspecting the paint job. We hadn’t been sure quite what to expect in terms of quality—we had joked earlier that we hoped they wouldn’t paint the tires green—so the professional workmanship came as a pleasant surprise. Although Whit noticed a couple of small drips around the windshield-wiper base, it was overall a very clean job. Even the doorjambs were properly painted. The vinyl logo applications were all done to spec. On top of the roof, mounted to the rollbar, were two large gray cone speakers. Inside the cab, a public-address amp with a tape deck was mounted on the console; connected to it was a microphone. Whit couldn’t resist. He climbed in, turned on the ignition, switched on the amp, and grabbed the mike. “Better battery, half the price!” It was loud. We jumped, at first from the surprise, then with delight. This could be all sorts of fun.
“Man, we can really scare kids in the villages now,” said Whit. “Nice job, Dave,” he added.
Back inside, Dave offered to take fifteen percent off the price of the audio equipment. Whit grudgingly accepted but pointed out he still didn’t understand what he was paying for. The invoice itemized two amps—an Ahuja “complete public address” for four hundred thirty-two cedis and another, with no brand listed, for one hundred forty-eight cedis; we could only see one amp, and it was not made by Ahuja. Where was the other amp, and what did it do? Dave didn’t know, he admitted. The technicians installed everything. “Can I see the owner’s manuals for this stuff?” asked Whit.
“I will get them for you,” said Dave. “They are not here.” Whit rolled his eyes. I went out to the truck to see if I could locate all the equipment. I looked under the seats, under the hood, under the dash. I saw only one amp, but I also noticed that the truck’s original radio was missing; there was a hole in the dashboard where it belonged.
“Whit, the radio’s gone,” I said, back inside.
“Huh?”
“As in, not there.”
“Oh, we have it,” said Dave. “We took it out so it would not be stolen.” A few minutes later an employee emerged from the back room with the radio, wires dangling. I went out to monitor the installation. The guy couldn’t get the antenna cable hooked up—for some reason it was now too short. I went back in and found Rose and Dave in a heated discussion about the T-shirt invoice. “I am not paying this,” she said. “The agreement was for five and a half cedis each, not six. I will pay the original price and no more.”
Dave seemed like the type who was not used to women standing up to him; I thought I detected steam coming out of his ears. He hovered over Rose and jabbed his finger at her. “You are Ghanaian!” he bellowed. “Surely you understand the problem of inflation in this country!”
Up to now Whit had been listening, letting Rose take charge—which she was doing very well. But I could tell he was getting angry that Dave would try to bully her (not that it was working). “Inflation?” said Whit incredulously. “Ten percent a week? Sorry Dave, but you are insulting our intelligence. The price was five and a half last week when we paid you a deposit. If it was going to be higher, you should have told us then.”
Outnumbered, Dave backed off. The technician came in and announced he could not connect the radio antenna without adding an extra length of cable. Whit rolled his eyes again. “It’s definitely not good t
o cut and splice coax,” he said, “but it sounds like we have no choice.” Whit shot me a look that said “What next?”
We had arrived in the Kia, with plans to leave it behind for its own paint job. But at this point, Whit wasn’t sure he still wanted to do any business with Dave. The guy had also been playing us along on getting posters printed; every week it was “next week” when his printers would get the right ink, and as with the car branding, price seemed to be arbitrary. Meanwhile, Burro was developing a network of agents who owned shops in key market towns and along main roads. Unlike “freelance” agents, who could walk around and introduce the battery to their neighbors, shopkeepers couldn’t leave their stores and sell door to door. They needed signage to announce the product. Without what Whit called “promotional air cover” to drive sales, he was worried that busy shopkeepers would lose their enthusiasm for Burro—a deadly setback for a start-up.
So the need for posters was immediate, and Dave was punting. Fortunately we had found a reputable printer on our own—thanks to a brochure in a hotel, of all places. He was a charming and very professional Lebanese immigrant named Stephane Fawal, with many years’ experience as a printer both in Ghana and France. While Dave hemmed and hawed about getting ink (and revised his price daily), Stephane was ready to roll; in fact we had met with him earlier that day to talk about options.
The next day, Sunday afternoon, Whit and I decided to take the truck out for a test run on one of the battery routes. We headed west out of town on a dirt road to Ampedwae. You could say our first test was more anthropological than technical. There is a part of the male brain, fully developed by the fifth grade and requiring no further academic discipline or apprenticeship, that recognizes categorically the intrinsic hilarity of amplified bodily noises. Mel Brooks paid homage to this branch of connoisseurship when he declared that as long as he was making movies, farts would be heard. In that spirit, Whit and I quickly performed a rigorous field test of belching into the microphone before moving on to more technical trials. I plugged in my iPod and cranked up some best hits from E. T. Mensah, the father of postwar Ghanaian highlife music who synthesized American big-band jazz with African rhythms. That turned some heads along the road: it’s not exactly the sort of music you heard every day in Ghana in 2009, especially blasting from a bright green truck with two obrunis in it. We waved at farmers and market ladies and children along the road, and they all stared and laughed at the spectacle. “White folk actin’ stranger every day!” Whit said like a 1930s Hollywood plantation mammy. We switched the soundtrack to Bob Marley, which is to say the soundtrack of life in Ghana, and watched children break into frenzied dance moves as we passed. They dropped their loads of water jugs and plantains and chased us like we were an ice cream truck.
Max Alexander Page 26