She had a crush on me

By Harry Sagara One of the Byanyima sisters had a crush on me. Not Winnie, Edith or Martha but the other slender and tall one, I think her name is Olivia Byanyima. She was head over heels for me (or so I thought). From the looks she used to give me, I imagined she wanted me to marry her. I know this because whenever I approached her, she would look me straight in the eyes before wearing this invitingly beautiful smile. Never mind that whenever I tried to say HI to her she couldn’t answer back, her eyes would only broaden (and become a bit dreamy) and then she would wink before exposing a neat set of teeth punctuated by a small gap that would send me singing...I wish I wish I wish! Anyway, if you are planning to gate-crash our wedding then relax, there is no wedding, I don’t personally know Olivia Byanyima. I have never even been in her company at her favorite Rise and Shine pub in Ntinda and I don’t really care who she is. I only used to see her image alongside that of Henry Kamuntu and Fred Kavulu on an MTN Ki Kati billboard near KPC building. I would notice her disarming smile on that billboard from a distance just like anyone else who glanced that direction! -Sorry folks for the disillusionment, my imagination was just running wild. So now you know we are talking billboards here, not marriages. They are all over town and very soon we might have a national billboard crisis. Who puts up these billboards? Who the hell are the faces on them? How does one get to appear on one? Patrick Oyulu of ADAPT-TBWA, a company contracted to put up all MTN Uganda billboards, says that there is no laid down criterion for people to appear on billboards. He adds that what happens is; people are invited for auditions and the best looking poses are selected. You could imagine that being on one such billboard is bliss, but Henry Kamuntu, the guy who was alongside Byanyima and Kavulu on that Ki-kati ad near KPC says it’s nothing. “I felt nothing really, being up there on that billboard. Actually it hasn’t changed my life at all, not even a single bit, I am still the same though I think it’s worth it when the makalus (slang for Money) come in,” he says. Meanwhile, Byanyima, Kamuntu’s counter part on that billboard was riled by a mid-morning telephone call from the New Vision. “I don’t give press interviews unfortunately, just write that I said that,” she told this writer and hang up. ADAPT’s Oyulu says that the impression one gets after seeing the various billboards around town is that there is a grand battle between telephone companies, beer companies and any other. He says that the unseen reality about these billboards is that it’s a battle of advertising agencies. “And these are quite many, the big queries here are things like, which agency is spewing out appealing ads, whose style is the best, who is consistent in imagery and whose message is wooing customers. Is the Ki kati ad for example increasing MTN’s customer base and holding out on defections to other next works. Are the Mango offers juicy enough when portrayed in the adverts by VR Promotions?” he asks. Folks at ADAPT are not willing to discuss how much money the people on billboards are paid to be up there but the grapevine whispers that it is well between sh600.000 and sh1.6 million. “It is good money I was paid, I don’t want to go into the figures but I can assure you it’s worth parading your face on that billboard,” says a lady who featured on a Nile Breweries billboard but prefers to remain anonymous. If you have seen the six- year-old girl on MTN’s new billboard near the Gayaza Road roundabout, then you can be sure the pretty young girl is Malie Baingana, daughter to Kampala Casino spokeswoman, Jean Bageire. When contacted for views about her daughter being used for an advert, Bageire said she had no obligation to speak on her daughter’s behalf. “Well, I think she enjoys it though I am not in position to speak on her behalf, why don’t you ask her how it feels,” she told this writer. Bageire added that there was so much money involved in her daughters deal with ADAPT that she (the daughter) wouldn’t understand it. “It’s a lot of money but I cannot tell you how much, I have deposited it on her account,” she says. The most striking things about these billboards are the way they are conceptualised, designed and finally hang up there. Oyulu says that such concepts are the brainchild of a production team working hand in hand with a fleet of copywriters. The wordings you see on these billboards are not the result of an overnight affair but the result of sleepless nights by employees of an advertising agency in a bid to present, convince and finally sell a product to the customer. Nile Breweries makes it’s billboards from Nairobi though they at times use pictures of local models. If you recall that Celtel Uganda billboard where this lady was asking whether she could be of any help to you (whoever was watching), reliable sources say that this lady is actually one of the top models in Zambia. Suffice it to say that most of the big-time companies actually do their designing from abroad and feed our local markets with it. Examples are, the British Airways billboard on the Airport road in Entebbe, the Nile Breweries board near the Kayunga road stage (Kamwokya), all the Fanta and Coca-Cola. Remember during the ki kati craze, for weeks the public was at pains making out what this was all about. To add to their misery the MTN folks tried to keep it a mystery and when they finally unveiled what this was all about-the message had sank into the public’s mind real deep. One of the twins on the new MTN billboards, Peace Nyangoma says that she gets lots of undue attention from the public after appearing on that shot where she was whispering something to her twin sister, Diana Nyakato. “I get a lot of attention, it at times gets uncomfortable but what the heck, I like the money that comes with it, I actually just went there for the money,” she tells The New Vision. Frederick Makmot says that some wordings on billboards are just so interesting that you feel like using the advertised service or product there and then. He gives and example of the British airways billboard near the golf club which has a picture of the interior of a British airways airbus and a phrase that goes like; “YOU WONT HAVE TO FIND YOUR HEAD ON SOMEONE ELSE’S LAPTOP.” ends