Business News of 2012-10-09

Tigo poaches Airtel’s Brand Communications Manager

The Brand Communications Manager of Airtel Ghana, Linda Narh has crossed over to Tigo Ghana in the same capacity.

Linda left Airtel in September this year and joined Tigo on Thursday October 4, 2012 as Brand Communications Manager with the responsibility of managing the Tigo brand, events, activations, trade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and public relations and media relations.

In that capacity, Linda has Tigo Ghana’s entire corporate communications, media relations, public relations and adverting teams reporting to her, and she reports to the Head of Marketing, Tenu Awoonor.

She comes to Tigo with a rich experience in marketing, marketing communications, brand communications, events management, activations, project management, and public relations.

Linda Narh is a Chartered Marketer by profession with over 10 years experience in marketing communication management.

Linda Narh entered the telecoms industry in September 2008 as Brand Communications Manager for Zain (now Airtel).

In that capacity, she also managed the marketing communication of all of Zain/Airtel’s campaigns.

Linda led the Zain Ghana team in November 2010 to re-brand from Zain to Airtel and successfully transferred the Zain brand equity to Airtel within two years.

The successful rebranding from Zain to Airtel won Airtel Ghana’s CEO the Telecom CEO of the Year at the maiden MobileWorld Ghana Telecom Awards.

During Linda’s 4-year stay at Zain/Airtel, the company also won the CIMG Telecom Company of the Year twice in 2010 and 2011; and the ground breaking CSR initiative; “Touching Lives” also won the CIMG TV programme of the year in 2010.

In 2011, she project managed Airtel's major brand/CSR soccer initiative- ‘Airtel Rising Stars’, which led to the discovery of Priscilla Okyere, the current captain of the Black Maidens.

Just about two months ago, Linda organized and hosted the first ever ‘Airtel Rising Stars’ soccer clinic in Ghana with coaches from Arsenal FC- UK for budding soccer stars from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Zambia.

Linda was also part of the team that project managed this year's Airtel Touching Lives CSR campaign.

Prior to going into the telecoms industry, Linda started off her career as an Account Manager with Lowe Lintas where she was for 8 years managing accounts like Unilever, Malta Guinness, Barclays Bank and Ghana Telecom (now Vodafone).

At Lowe Lintas, Linda was also the Account Manager for John Hopkins University (JHU) and GSMF, where she project managed the launch of two major social marketing campaigns in Ghana- 'Stop Aids, Love Life' and ‘Life Choices’.

She also worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers where she worked with the team to organize the first ever Ghana's Most Respected Companies and CEOs Award.

Linda has a degree in Social Science from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and a Post-Graduate Diploma from CIM-UK.

It is expected that her going into Tigo would bring some transformation and dynamism to the corporate communications, media relations and brand position of Tigo.

Meanwhile, the Head of Corporate Affairs at Airtel, Donald Gwira is acting in Linda’s role at Airtel until the company finds a permanent replacement.