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Monday, March 14, 2011

"We Are Tomorrow's Zambia"

This past Youth Day, on 12th March 2011, our still happening, 74 year old president, sent us a message.

Yes, RB has a YouTube Channel.

I definitely like the fact that someone in State House is trying to communicate with youth in a language they think young people will understand and relate to. This is a good start, which the idealist in me wants to believe can lead to more dialogue and engagement with young people. And quite frankly, I don't see anyone else making the effort to communicate with me as a young person. And so, advantage - Banda.

We all want to be heard, to feel understood and to know that we have been considered -- that we matter. Every good PR person knows this.

Obviously, the discerning will see through such tricks. But, honestly, I don't think we have very many of such people around. In a developing country such as ours, the masses are satisfied with very little and that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly how our leaders like it.

7 comments:

  1. The problem is, this clip is payed by Taxpayers money and broadcasted on ZNBC, while I have not seen any other advert of a party on ZNBC. Somehow wrong.
    The quality of the clip is quite good.

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  2. I think picture quality is good. However, the mode of delivery is non-Zambian. When will we realize that Zambia is not an English province? A mosaic of popular Zambian languages would have suggested direction to "Tomorrow Zambia." Ziggy Marley said, "Tomorrow people, where is your past?" We can't have a weak today and expect to have a strong tomorrow. We should demonstrate strength today to survive into tomorrow.

    Salute

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  3. Its easy to be an arm chair critic baMwata. Why not in your words give us your version of what a 72tribes province clip would look like. SMH!

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    1. We can't all be doing music and videos.
      However, there is a young man who I gave seed capital. He is one of the few knocking on my door for a script which is almost done. I am also sitting on a panel of reviewers for some of the videos you will be seeing in future. So, you see, I am not just criticizing but putting my resources where my mouth is.

      Mwata

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  4. I think that the purpose was to communicate with young people in a language and medium that they understand and the message is something along the lines of, "I am your President and I want you to be a part of the future I am creating for you". This is more of a music video style, which may not appeal to the average Zambian, but definitely appeals to the majority of our population. Demographically, Zambia is a youthful nation. I am sure that a local language campaign advert can be developed for rural areas or a local language advert with 'town Bemba' and 'street Nyanja' for the urban youth.
    I won't comment on the effectiveness of this PSA, but I appreciate that efforts are being made to reach out to young people. Tokenism is a start. Similarly, it is easy to assume that this was paid for by tax payers' money, but I have no evidence of that fact.

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    1. For "the language that they understand to be non-Zambia," the nation must have taken a detour somewhere. Get my point? I got a ride from a pirate taxi one evening from City center of Lsk when the driver a kid about half my age played some almost forgotten about tunes by Paul Ngozi. I asked him where got those rarities and his response was, "I seek them wherever I can find them." I asked him why and he said "my late father played them all the time, these songs remind me of him, a very strong and loving man."

      Another kid at another time was busy searching for latest english tunes on his flash drive, the kind that you would be hard pressed to find a young man of his age listening to even in the west. Asked him why those numbers in particular, his answer was, "their culture ba Chisha, is very strong." For the remainder of the ride I was wondering how our culture became weak if not for want of being seen to be like them (meaning white).

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  5. Unfortunately, I am not sure if I do get your point. To expand on my point from a year ago, the most effective communication is one where you speak to your audience in a language that they can understand and or relate to. That language (or medium) can be in music, dance, film, drama or actual spoken words. Within that language or medium you can use different tongues to say the written or spoken words. There is no one way to communicate with everybody, which is why we use multimedia and multiple media channels in communication campaigns. I am also not convinced that is an agreed definition of what constitutes Zambian. Which Zambians. We are so many and we are so different. I think it is ok, to say you don't get sonething, because you are not the target anyway. This is why I no longer complain about the quality of certain adverts, especially for washing powder. Clearly, somebody gets it because they keep producing them and the company is growing

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