Now that's what i'm talking about

Today I would like to explode another Nairobi advertising/marketing fraternity urban myth” Kenyans love money!”

Ok… yes… Kenyans do love money, or at least a lot of us do, but we also love family, church, school, job (sometimes), the rave, arsenali, eating goats, men/women, driving stupidly na kadhalika.

I guess I should therefore clarify myself by saying that the myth is “Kenyans love money" when it comes to thinking of a prize for a promotion…

If there is one thing that we are very fond of as an industry in Kenya, it’s promotions. As a guy who tends to think that the brand is the alpha and omega of everything, I personally tend to be wary of them. Whilst I do understand the pressures of quarterly sales targets, I also feel that one can become hooked on promotions – and like all the best stimulants, promotions produce diminishing returns over time (and side-effects).

That said, there is a time and a place for a promotion, and you will not work in advertising without having to spend some time designing one.

There are two key issues with any promotion: the mechanic (how to enter/play) and the prize (the draw/the temptation/the pull). I shall focus on the latter.

The first thing I would say, and this is one reason why the ‘just give away money’ thing is generally such a mistake, is that you should always try and give away a prize or prizes that are somehow relevant to your brand. It is often forgotten in advertising that actions speak just as loudly as words and pictures. The very selection of your prize delivers a message in and of itself about your brand. Note that repeated promotions dilute a brand (people should buy because they value the brand, not because it has turned into a lottery), so if your promotion can act to re-enforce the brand, it will help to counter-act the inherent dilution.

This is why I like this Naivas promotion (looking like a there's a good agency somewhere), because the prize on offer re-enforces the brand’s underlying position as the affordable supermarket that’s ‘by the people, for the people’. It demonstrates an understanding of the audience and is guaranteed to resonate with them (the holiday for grandparents by air is, methinks, a touch of genius).

Therefore pick prizes that are relevant to your brand and ‘make sense’ to your audience. Again, this is why the ‘love money’ thing is so insidiously dangerous… it demonstrates a ‘lowest common denominator’ mentality and speaks to a complete lack of empathy (the most important word in advertising) with your customers.

And there’s more! The ‘give away money’ thing is further a sign of incompetence because it breaks the key ‘be distinctive’ rule/principle discussed previously. A promotion is supposed to drive sales hard. Therefore it needs to be exciting and vibrant and un-missable (which does not mean star-bursts). Why then run a promotion giving away free money when so many promotions are giving away free money? What’s different about yours? What makes it stand out? Unless you are giving away a ridiculously huge amount of money – WIN ONE BILLION SHILLINGS!!! – then it is definitely worth the time and the effort to come up with prizes that are interesting and novel.

I also have a theory (there are many) that, where possible, and especially when budget is an issue, one should try and come up with prizes that have a value over and above the monetary cost of purchasing them – can you put a value to your grand-parent’s smiles?

Allow me to illustrate. Say you have the choice between giving away a million shillings in cash and giving away a CDSC account with a million shillings worth of shares in it. Think about the mental process that your audience will go through – with a million shillings it’s “I can buy X,Y, Z till the money is finished”, whilst with a loaded CDSC account it’s “Ooh… if I’m really clever I could turn that into 10 million shillings…”

I guess the point is you should always ask what dream (are we not dream-sellers?) you are trying to trigger… because yes we all need cash in Kenya, that is a cold and hard fact, but it is dreams that really drive us as humans, including driving us to spend more money…

Finally (I promise), promos are supposed to be fun, so make them fun! “Win 5 rounds in the ring with Conje!” “Win all the beer you can drink in 24 hours!” “Win a husband who washes the dishes and changes nappies!” “Win a briefcase political party!” “Win your weight in dark chocolate!” “Win 5 nights in Kamiti Maximum!” And so on and so forth. Why so serious…?