Kendi’s Lessons from 20 Years of Building Firms

K endi who studied marketing at the University of Nairobi and strategic management at the United States International University says that branding in the age of social media is a different ball game.

‘‘The theory of marketing and its practicality is different now. The fundamentals have remained the same. Branding is about how you position products. The goal is to persuade customers to give you their money. This never changes’’.

What also does not change is the need to understand the customer’s thinking, preferences and spending habits. How marketing is done, though, has changed.

‘‘How you talk to and connect with the customer has shifted a lot. The customer’s exposure and access to information is higher today. Before, an ad was all you needed.’’

These days, simply publishing one is not enough, she says. ‘‘I have so many places to fact-check. Customers want conversations. They want to give feedback. Before, we had to commission research to gauge the market perception of a product. This would take up to a month. With social media, feedback is real-time.’’

Nothing gives the marketer as much joy as branding a product from the ground up. ‘‘I am a builder. It is always an exciting opportunity to [create a buzz] around a product. It is through branding that major international brands that started as local products built with local insights went global.’’

It is at EABL that she learned to be ‘‘audacious with goals’’ thanks to big budgets and multiple projects.

‘‘I was involved in Tusker Project Fame for three seasons. I was the brand manager for Tusker at the time.’’

Any lessons about money that she hopes to learn while working in the financial space? She reveals that learning was one of the biggest motivators for the move to Absa.