Reserve Bank pump billions into misleading ‘zero to hero’ adverts

By Lance Guma
17 August 2006

Several commentators saw it coming a mile away and weeks into the Reserve Bank’s new monetary regime governor Gideon Gono’s PR machine has started being economic with the truth. Some business analysts had commended the slashing of 3 zeroes off the currency as the only practical measure to help solve cumbersome transactions, but it seems the currency change is now being turned into a misleading publicity campaign.

The Central Bank has commissioned several adverts in all the major newspapers, radio and television to give the impression prices have gone down. One advert has a picture of a sliced loaf of bread, with bold highlighted text saying ‘was $85 000’ now ‘$85.’ Jessie Majome a lawyer who spoke to Newsreel says the advert is misleading in two respects. She points out that the price of bread is actually over Z$200 000 ($200 in the new regime) and the adverts are trying to give the impression prices have gone down when in real terms they have not.

The same is being done for fuel. The adverts declare fuel was ‘$350 000’ but now ‘$350’ which again is also misleading because Zimbabweans are buying fuel at over Z$900 000 per litre under the old currency rules. If the adverts had at least represented the actual cost it would have made sense she pointed out but ‘the Reserve Bank have other ideas it seems and live in cloud cuckoo land.’

Over the Heroes holiday adverts with the theme from ‘zero to hero’ were splashed across the country. Whether this was planned to pan with the holiday theme or glorify the Reserve Bank for its measures remains unclear. An advertising executive who spoke to Newsreel estimated the campaign will gobble up billions of dollars. He says the campaign seems to have shifted from explaining the monetary transition to giving the impression prices have actually gone down, when they have not.