The very plans being made to turn Botswana into a world class exporter to international markets and investment paradise for international firms may hurt the country’s reputation because the Botswana Export Development Agency (BEDIA) may have commissioned, approved and paid for a plagiarised piece of artwork as part of Brand Botswana visiual identity.
This is because the recently re-launched Brand Botswana logo bears striking resemblance to the logo of neighbouring South Africa’s Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency. The logo is very similar to that of the MASA (HIV/AIDS therapy programme). The link between the MASA logo and the Brand Botswana logo is that they both use Horizon Ogilvy as their advertising agency.
Artistically, it seems the artist left the concept of the illustration virtually unchanged. The Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency logo, which is copyrighted along with other contents of their website, appears to be the source. It has a rendition of the sun peering over what appears to be either a hill or horizon. The Mpumalanga’s artist’s impression of the sun has five rays while Brand Botswana’s has seven. Further each ray on the Brand Botswana’s visual has different colours.
“When you consider the concept of all three logos, you can see that they are really the same thing. The Brand Botswana one and the Mpumalanga one are especially close. Look at the illustrations and the placement of the text, it’s too close for comfort. It has obviously been plagiarised,” said a local graphic artist who wished to remain nameless.
He maintains the Brand Botswana logo is a copy, and not a derivative of the Mpumalanga one because the Brand Botswana is new.
Plagiarism is the unathourized use of close imitation of someone’s work and the representation of that works as one’s own original work.
Another graphic designer, J.T., is much more stern in the critique of the Brand Botswana and Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency logo.
“If I formed my own political party and took the Botswana Democratic Party’s symbol of a car jack and put it on a purple background, would that make my logo different from Domkrag’s? Could I call it mine? No, everybody will be able to see that I ripped it from BDP. That’s exactly what happened in this case. It’s a shameless and blatant theft. Someone needs to account for this mess. It will bring this country into disrepute. Imagine trying to brand Botswana with a stolen identity. This is tatamount to high treason,” he said.
It will probably take a while to get BEDIA to answer to the charges of possible creative theft or say the least, the alleged copyright infringement. A questionaire sent to the organisation last week remains unresponded to, as the organisation’s Deputy Director of communications, Kungo Lentswe, said BEDIA CEO and former education minister Jacob Nkate and Brand Botswana’s Deputy Director Ludo Mokotedi are said to be attending a fair in China.
At the time of going to press, even Coordinator for the Government Communications and Information Systems, Dr Jeff Ramsay, had not responded to an inquiry emailed to him last Wednesday.
The national brand was engineered to be steered by Brand Botswana Management Organisation interim board of directors led by BEDIA’s former CEO Dorcas Makgato-Malesu, BEDIA’s former communications manager and now Debswana’s Group Public and Corporate Affairs Manager, Esther Kanaimba, the now deceased Managing Director of Horizon Ogilvy Botswana, Mathata Gasennelwe, Sheila Khama of De Beers Botswana, Chief Negotiator in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Motlhware Masisi, Coordinator for the Government Communications and Information Systems, Dr Jeff Ramsay and Ms Kate Maphage, a business woman.
When announcing the first launch of logo in Hukuntsi on 31 October 2007, the then BEDIA communications manager, Kanaimba, was quoted in the Daily News as saying the branding strategy was developed by Kaiser Associates and Place Brands “after assessing the current economic realities, strategies and organisational capabilities of Botswana as well as the current perception within the country and internationally.”
The same report said a senior multi-stakeholder team of representatives from the government, the private sector and civil society guided the branding process and was chaired by the then Minister of Trade and Industry Mr Neo Moroka.
However, when the brand logo was unveiled to the public, much furore arose from the parliament, radio call-in programmes, letters-to-the-editors, calling for its revision.
Beginning of last May, Moroka was also reported as saying the brand’s pay off line, ‘Opportunity and tranquillity beckon’, was seen in some quarters as elitist and exclusive.”
After much expressions of disapproval by many quarters, including the general public, Moroka last year announced that “they” were going back to the drawing boards to see how the brand could be improved. He attributed the revision of the brand logo and its pay-off line to a decision taken by the High Level Consultative Council.
Although the public and the media were only aware of the questionable standard of the creative aspect of the brand logo, another bigger problem could be hidden from view.
In media reports last year, Moroka “acknowledged shortcomings in that Botswana Brand is not marketed and publicised as it should be”, a setback he attributed to absence of an executive officer.
He reportedly said the post of the Executive Officer had been advertised in 2008, but had not been filled. No explanation ever surfaced as to the reason why.
Furthermore, he allegedly lamented that “everything dealing with the national brand is managed by the Botswana Export Development and Investment Authority (BEDIA), a burden that distracts the latter from concentrating on its core business”.
Even more telling was his supposed assertion that BEDIA could not give the brand the full attention it needs and that he took the blame for having launched the brand before a proper structure to manage it was in place.
Less than a year after Moroka said all this, his successor, Jacob Nkate bought space in the local media, announcing Brand Botswana’s return under his wings. It would seem that everything Moroka said about the brand needing a dedicated wing to run fell on deaf ears.
Questions arising from this turn of events are many. Does the new minister of Trade and Industry use a different compass from Moroka’s? Was the brand logo hastily re-launched unmodified to meet the World Cup deadline that Moroka had alluded to in press reports? Did Gasennelwe’s demise make it difficult for BEDIA to go back to the drawing board? How much did Horizon Ogilvy bag from imitating the Mpumalamga logo?
Two weeks ago, instead of revealing a different illustration that would serve as the brand logo, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Dorcas Makgato-Malesu, showed the same old artwork, but with a different pay-off line: Our pride, Your Destination.
In her remarks at the official revealing of the brand, Makgato-Malesu was reported as saying “during the process of review of the original brand and taking into consideration all the feedback from the people it became clear that the brand logo was appropriate and representative of what needed to be communicated with the brand”.
The biggest source of contention, in her view, was the pay-off line, which she said “the public found too long, convoluted, tongue twisting and not representative of Batswana and their aspirations”.
According to well placed sources, a totally different advertising agency, and not Horizon Ogilvy conceptualised the new pay-off line.
In light of these developments, it remains to be seen if BEDIA, which is reportedly gearing to flight Brand Botswana advertisements on DSTV during the world cup using a contentious visual art work.
The following is a critique and exposition of examples by artist Mark Allen on his website of the works of creative plagiarism Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey.
