Is it time to call time on Tusker?

I’ve been waiting for the next big thing from Tusker for a long time now – a good 15 years at least in my estimation. On the evidence of this new "It’s our time” campaign, I’ll be waiting for a lot longer…

Tusker is a brand that many Kenyan men hold very close to their heart, especially at around 2.30 am whilst swaying slowly and unsteadily on the dancefloor whilst imagining that Mariah Carey is actually singing those sweet words to you personally.

But there’s (a lot) more to it than that. Every Nation’s manhood has a lager brand which is a fundamental part of the self-definition of that Nation’s manhood - ‘This is the beer that the men of this Nation drink.’ Now in Kenya, the ‘beer of the men of the Nation’ is Tusker – it is the beer that “makes us equal (as Kenyan men) and has no equal (amongst and for Kenyan men)”.

Now some years ago it would appear that the powers at eabl/Diageo made a decision to push the Tusker brand into the wider African market. This was a very brave decision as it essentially necessitated an attempt to create and define a sense of African (as opposed to Zimbabwean, Kenyan, Angolan or Yoruban) ‘man-hood’. It was this push that drove the development of the line ‘refresh your roots’ (which I note keeps getting smaller and smaller in the Tusker layouts), the idea or insight being, I guess, that a respect for tradition and our fore-fathers is a common feature of all African societies.

To my mind the way that eabl went about selling Tusker in other markets was strategically incorrect. When you take one Nation’s beer to another Nation, the approach, I think, should not be to try and subsume the other Nation’s identity under a new one (African-ness). Instead one should be trying to sell the ‘manhood-ness’ of the Nation from which the beer comes to the men of the Nation to whence it is going. Thus Budweiser will never be the number one beer in any Nation other than USA!!!, but it has a significant following around the world amongst men who ‘buy-in’ to the vision of young, baggy-clothes-wearing, wasssuuup-shouting, baseball-watching, blue-collar American ‘manhood-ness’ that Bud is so good at selling.

All beers that have successfully sold in their non-domestic markets (as per my far from in-depth study of these matters) have done so by following essentially the same approach. Thus both Fosters and Castlemaine XXXX sell the concept of irreverent, don’t-give-a-damn, straight-talking, semi-cowboy Australian ‘manhood-ness’. Castle tries the same (though with little luck hapa Kenya) with their whole braai & rugby South African ‘manhood-ness’ thing. Corona sells ‘Yarriibaa!!!’ Mexican ‘manhood-ness’. Kirin sells ‘deadly ninja’ Japanese manhood-ness, Peroni sells ‘check-my-Gucci-suit’ Italian manhood-ness, Tennent’s sells ‘what you looking at’ Scottish manhood-ness, and so on and so forth. Therefore, for me, the way to sell Tusker to the World would be to sell Kenyan manhood-ness, whatever that may be (Answers on a postcard please.)

To an extent I digress. The flipside of the push into Africa, and the resulting ‘South Africans dancing on tables’ refresh your roots TV ad, was a big disconnect with the men of the home market. A quick change in bottle shape (probox) to try and divert the attention and then, as any kindergarten child could have predicted, Tusker come back waving the flag for all that it’s worth in a rather desperate attempt to say ‘no no no, we’re still Kenyan…’

Now the rule discussed above in relation to selling a lager brand in foreign markets applies equally to the home market – what you are actually selling is the concept of Kenyan manhood. The feeling (ain’t no logic with beer) that Mr. Kenyan Everyman must get when he watches your advert is “Damn right I’m a Kenyan man, I’m damn proud to be one and I wouldn’t be seen dead drinking anything other than Tusker” (or words to that effect).

This is the reason why both the ‘Baada ya Kazi” and “Mbili Mbili” campaigns were so powerful and so effective. Both excellently captured a key truism about the lives of Kenyan men – we work hard, are focused and determined, but we still like to pass by the local for a quick two with our boys before we head home to wifey and kids.

So therefore the question I ask of this “It’s our time” campaign is this: what does it say to me about what it means to be a Kenyan man?

Not very much I’m afraid is the answer. Does the song stir something deep in my belly that links me back down through the soil to my ancestors who roamed this land before me? Hell no. It sounds like it’s sung by a choirboy. Then it’s in English!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When was the last time that there was a (local) hit song in this town that was in English (and no the use of the word ‘kwetu’ at the end doesn’t count). Visually there is no story – it is simply a collection of clichés – and I can prove it – simply replace the Tusker bottle at the end with the Vision 2030 logo and voila, nothing’s really changed. In fact, this ad reminds me a lot of Obak’s Jamhuri Day speech, but I won’t go there…

As a Kenyan man, I consider the Tusker brand to be my personal property, I am a shareholder (which I believe is the level of engagement that every brand should aspire to). Therefore, as a shareholder, when Tusker doesn’t ‘Talk nicely’, I take it very personally. To me this advert is perhaps the classic example of the “let’s sit in our ivory towers in Nairobi and pontificate at great length about how wonderfully glorious Kenya is without actually saying anything” syndrome that so utterly drives me insane.

The great way to test a beer ad for a brand like Tusker is to ask a very simple question: would you show this ad with pride to visiting man from the other Nations of the world? Would you sit a Russian, a Mexican, a Nigerian, a Danish and an Indonesian man in front of the TV and tell them “Watch… here you shall see everything about what it means to be a Kenyan man…” Hell. No.

Straight up, and I say this with the greatest of respect to homosexual men, with whom I have no beef, this ad is gay. It’s weak, it’s floppy, it’s insipid. It is as far away from a celebration of Kenyan manhood as anything that I can imagine. Mboya, Kimathi, Kenyatta, Kaggia, Jaramogi, and all them other original bad-boy Kenyan men must be turning in their graves.

To the agency responsible. This brand is a part of our National heritage. I would blame the client, but the client can only chose to approve from what is placed before them. There is a point at which a brand becomes bigger than the revenue that it generates. As I said at the beginning, this is a brand that Kenyan men hold very close to our hearts. Do our hearts mean so little to you that this is the best that you can do to move them?