What marks out a champion from the crowd is his game-changer spirit; the belief that he can be and will always be the champion. We consistently see that spirit of I-am-the-champ in the boxing sensation, World Boxing Heavyweight Champion, Anthony Joshua as he strings his gloves to global leadership with wins after wins. And when a champion bonds with another champion, with a global brand, as shown in the television commercial (TVC) of Joshua with Globacom, the result is the sensation and stir of man and spirit across the land – which is exactly what we see here.
Genuine champions inspire, they take measured steps and dictate the pace. And this is where Globacom and Joshua share the winning spirit as shown with the television commercial. In Globacom, we have seen how a champ enters the ring and immediately blinds its competitors with its per-second knockout, forever casting out per-minute demons out of the telecoms industry in Nigeria. Since that early times, Glo has stayed put as the champion, dictating the pace even as the industry grows. The TVC, first released on February 1st, 2019 is the digital metaphor for the winner-inspiration which Glo and Joshua represent on the world stage. We gape at the commercial as it opens with this female undergrad of the University of Lagos watching. Then the innocence of childhood is brought in with this boy in his father’s living room tapping wisdom from the lips of the champion. The tape rolls on and on for the champion as the TVC moves to other climes.
The inspiration which champions give includes the mobility of the totality of their being. Champions themselves are never physically static, even when they are floored – that is why the grass of failure never grows under their feet. Hear Joshua: “ You don’t stay down. You’ve got to fight. You have to dig deep to be a world champion.” And so, like a great boxer in the ring, the TVC’s klieg-light moves briskly from dry land to the waterside where we see fishermen casting their nets wide for sustenance but still having time for the message of the boxing sensation. Then the TVC flips time and space and berths in Aba – in a struggling tailor’s shop. From that heart of Igboland in Aba, the message of the champion flies to catch the attention of even busy female basketball players in Port Harcourt who show class by watching the champ on an iPad. The next station of the champion is a Sokoto classroom where a laptop serves some students the rich salad of Joshua’s message. The final destination is Abuja where a lady, an executive (if you like, call her a big girl) is shown watching the champ on her phone.
We hear the strong Joshua speak softly to our cravings for victory: If you want “to be a world champion,” he says, “you have to dig deep.” And he stresses that his words are for Nigerians who never give up and about Glo as the brand of Champions: “There’s always been a big piece of my heart as a Nigerian and I do believe that it is that piece that sets me apart. It always says to me, ‘never give up, dream big! We come from a nation of warriors and that is why I believe in Glo. We have that same tenacity, that Nigerian fighting spirit that makes us game changers! We are relentless. We don’t just face our challenges, we step into the ring to win again and again and again. If you believe in yourself, there is no limit to what you can achieve. Yeah, I used to be a bricklayer in England but now I am heavyweight champion of the world!” That is the message Joshua takes round the country in that television commercial.
The commercial, indeed, is a successful metaphor for what a champion is – an everybody’s person – an elephant, big enough to catch the fancy of all in markets and forests. And a champion never allows his bigness to hold him down in arrogant, static idleness. He is ever mobile in body, mind and spirit forcing the other side to make the chase, take the rear, panting. That is why he remains a champion. We see that in the Joshua TVC and we see that too in the Grand Master of Data, Globacom and in its unbeatable, borderless 4G coverage of Nigeria. Glo takes its accessible 4G coverage to peasants in villages, to white collar gentlemen and ladies in the cities, to Muslims, Christians, animists, all – North and South of Nigeria and even beyond. It is an inspiration Globacom draws from its founding father and one of the world’s two richest blackmen, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr, a businessman extraordinaire and silent philanthropist who early in life adopted impossibility as his mantra.
So, did you hear Joshua in the commercial tell Nigerians that to be champions they need strength? “You need strength,” he says firmly. That ‘strength’ he talks about is the muscle you see in the services and products of Glo and in its enduring brand. When he adds that the ‘strength’ comes not from anything easy but from the “hard knocks that life throws at us,” he leaves no doubt as to whom he is addressing. It takes an unyielding champion to build a global brand which is what Glo has become in Nigeria. “And we are Nigerians,” Joshua says, “we know all about that.”
Ayodeji sent this piece from Lagos.