First up, I would like to say that the Radio Africa group
is, In My Humble Opinion, the best ‘commercial communications agency’ in this
our home town. I come to this conclusion on the basis of the efficacy of their work. Whilst they are
very much radio-centric, the creative teams at Radio Africa have gotten the art
of ‘moving product’ in Nairobi (and to a lesser extent across Kenya) down to a
tee… their insistence on process, and their rigorous briefing methodology,
whilst often annoying, is something that I have always admired, and I believe
that it is something that pretty much every other agency in this town could
learn from.
Now Radio Africa does not pay me to sing it’s praises,
unfortunately, and to prove this I will point out that I do find their prime-time
radio shows to be a bit over-loaded with ‘inventory’ – more breathing space
between sales pitches wouldn’t hurt, and they are after all in a position to
charge a higher premium to make up for the resulting loss of frequency – though
I guess that there’s a reason why PQ is PQ and I am just writing a blog…
Moving on. It is interesting in a time of political
campaigning that this John Sibi-Okumu campaign should so well highlight the
importance of name (brand) recognition. It highlights it so well in fact that
the ad essentially consists of nothing but (recognizable) names, plus of course
the big picture of the key name in question.
It has for a long time been one of my maxims that one of our
key jobs in the ad game is to make our brands famous – to give them crazy
levels of name/brand recognition. This may sound obvious, and perhaps trite,
but it is unfortunate how often it is forgotten hapa Kenya.
My old boss always used to tell me to try and picture my
audience as a group of men sitting around a bar room table (had he been a she I
guess it would have been women in a salon…). The very first thing that our
advertising has to do is to get that group of men to talk about it, and by
extension about our brand (remembering that we are competing with much juicier
subjects of conversation including but not limited to pesa, pombe, siasa na
wanawake…)
Now the first thing required for this group of men to talk
about you is that they know who you are – name
(brand) recognition. If they don’t know who you are, it doesn’t matter if
what you are trying to sell to them is literally the best thing since sliced
bread, you will not factor in the equation.
Building name recognition is what your ad agency will
normally call an ‘awareness campaign’, and it is the most fundamental and basic
of all steps that you must take when you start putting your brand out there
into the world.
A lot of brands in this town, especially new ones that are
launching, ignore or forget the simple fact that objective 1 must be
for people to know that you exist. This is why it is often a very good idea,
although creative types will scream from the rooftops when I say this, to
simply plaster a big picture of your (hopefully well designed) pack shot all
over town. If you want to support this big picture with a simple brand promise
– “Cleans whites whiter’ or ‘ Malizas headaches faster’ or ‘Get’s you drunk for
less’ – then so be it, but remember that the key objective is to start building
a sense of visual familiarity with your brand, so that when the customer sees
it on the shelf their reaction is not “Kwani huyu ni nani?” but rather “I know
you…”
It has been said before but I’ll say it again, people buy
brands that they are familiar with – note the root of the word, brands that are
a part of the ‘family’, that exist within our social universe – we know them,
we like them, we are comfortable with them, we trust them…
The key point however that I would like to make today is
about sustaining awareness. People
can and do forget you/your brand? This is why the big international FMCG brands
are permanently ‘in your face’ – everytime you see an Omo, or a Coca Cola, or
Sunlight or Dettol billboard, what they are essentially saying to you,
regardless of the particular combination of words and pictures used, is “Hey!
Remember me!!!” Because they understand (all too well) that if they don’t keep
saying this to you, you will (eventually) forget them – anyone remember Kimbo,
other than when reminded about it, like I have just reminded you?
Maintaining ‘Top-of-mind awareness’ must be one of the key
objectives of any brand, and should be the first item in your annual
communication strategy. Tactically it’s not all that complicated, simply
identify relevant communication properties that you can own for the year and
develop three or four executions for them which you can rotate so as to keep
your messaging fresh.
The above (apart from the multiple executions thing) is one
of the reasons why wall-branding is such a big deal in this country – it’s
affordable, it’s ubiquitous and it keeps your brand ‘front and center’ 365 days
of the year.
A refusal (ignorance is no defence) to invest in maintaining
the awareness levels of your brand is a declaration of defeat in the market
place. I am curious to see how Radio Africa keep John Sibi-Okumu ‘front and
center’ in the weeks and months to come, especially given the fact that they’ve
put him head-to-head with the Citizen Nipashe bandwagon – now that’s a
discussion for the bar table…
P.S. No way were I Nation that I would have run this ad…
especially not with less than 10% viewership on NTV…
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