Tag Archive for 'Digital'

How cars could be digitally marketed and sold in Kenya.

Published on October 2, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I love cars. If you follow me on Twitter or are a Friend on Facebook, you would know by now how much I love Formula One and by extension cars. In Kenya, as happens in the rest of Africa, the business of marketing and selling cars has remained largely “old school” in that little has changed over the last three decades or so. Sure, many automotive dealers selling new and pre-owned cars have corporate and sometimes (local) brand web sites these days but this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you can actually do to in terms of selling cars via digital channels. During a recent trip to South Africa, I experienced what I could only describe as a cutting edge approach to marketing a new car in that market – The Nissan Juke.

The Nissan Juke is what you would call a small SUV. Its brand new to South Africa and clearly the Agency that was briefed to market the Nissan Juke must have been given full creative license to come up with an innovative digital marketing approach. The whole marketing approach starts by having a “prominent” (read: spotlights, barriers, etc) closed off space in a mall where you cannot see anything at all, as below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, as you can see, there is NOTHING in the closed off space. This is where it gets interesting. The team doing the brand activation then come up to you and ask you if you would like to see the car? “What car?” you ask. They then point their iPad at the empty space for a few seconds as below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, you wait for a few seconds and the following is what you see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And…PRESTO! A virtual Nissan Juke floats onto the screen of the iPad. However, its a complete 3D mock-up of the car so using the iPad you can “walk” around the car and even open the doors and peer in, etc. Its like the real thing but only its digital and virtual. Its a classic case of using augmented reality to market a real-world product in a virtual and digital space. This is really innovative and novel. However, it gets better as per the screen below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the above screen, right from the iPad, you can navigate to an online form so that you can book a test drive or make a general enquiry on the Nissan Juke. Now this bit of the “campaign” for the Nissan Juke I loved the most since instead of just interesting would be buyers, you capture lead details so that the selling process can begin immediately after the first marketing effort has been achieved.

Now, this whole campaign of the Nissan Juke may represent the cutting edge of digital marketing approaches that are possible for cars. However, it’s but just one way in which the marketing of cars could be reinvented in markets like Kenya and the rest of Africa. I can imagine an approach that leverages mobile optimized web sites, QR codes, mobile marketing, email marketing, etc in lots of new and exciting ways that get people to buy a  car -  instead of just glancing at a full-page newspaper ad or a billboard on a highway. To visit the campaign website for the Nissan Juke in South Africa go to www.nissanjuke.co.za

 

 

[Business Daily Article] Mobile Advertising needs apps to grow.

Published on July 28, 2011 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Mr Moses Kemibaro (left), Dealfish regional manager for East Africa, and Mr Neil Schwartzman, general manager for East and West Africa. The firm has challenged local online publishers to place inventory on mobile web.

This is an article from today’s edition of the Business Daily Newspaper in which I was quoted and Dealfish also got good mention. The article by Frankline Sunday talks about the importance of local mobile applications in Kenya for mobile (web) advertising to really take off. In effect, local publishers and mobile application developers are key to drive growth. You can read it here>

It’s time to get serious about digital marketing measurement in Africa.

Published on July 14, 2011 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

If your marketing online in Africa, chances are you could be seriously getting ripped off. I am talking about brands and businesses that are spending serious cash on digital marketing with a myriad of online publishers. The reality is that in many cases, the places where they are marketing are not delivering the goods in terms of the expected online traffic, as marketed by the online publisher. There is a simple reason for this – there is no real focus on accurate and detailed digital measurement.

Let me start by saying that there are many ways of measuring digital marketing performance. One of the most common tools these days is Google Analytics. In plain English, this free tool from the world’s largest search engine company is able to give you a detailed analysis of how well your web site is performing. Some of the key metrics on Google Analytics or any decent analytics tool include impressions, traffic sources, unique visitors, conversions, etc.

In a nutshell, you can track your web site performance down to very fine minutiae. In addition, as an online marketer, you can ask the online publisher you hope to use or already use to give you access to their analytics reports to make an informed decision as to whether to market with them or not. Typically, a snippet as below from a Google Analytics report is what you could expect to see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

One particular metric that for some reason is still being touted in Africa as a way of measuring online marketing performance is “hits”. You will often hear of online publishers claiming to have “millions of hits” per month and they will try to get you as an advertiser using this metric. The truth is this term and method of measuring web site traffic went out with the first dotcom crash a decade ago.

What matters these days more than anything are unique visitors per month who come to your web site as a result of advertising – this is really the gold standard of how to measure an online publisher’s true performance. However, sometimes, getting this information is challenging and subtler methods can be used to get a more detailed picture on exactly how well an online publisher is doing.

In addition to web analytics, there are several web sites that do offer a way of gauging an online publisher to see if they are worth their salt, so to speak. One such web site is Alexa. Alexa is a web site ranking service that has been operational for sometime now. Alexa uses a toolbar that is installed on web browsers to get an idea of how often a web site is visited. In most cases, Alexa will give you the 100 top web sites in a country for free.

However, Alexa is not perfect. It is possible for the rankings to be manipulated, but to a large extent it is more or less accurate in terms of telling you if an online publisher is doing well or not. For instance, if you put Dealfish.co.ke, the website I run in Kenya on Alexa, you will find that our web site currently has a ranking of 11 – meaning it’s the second most popular local web site in Kenya. It will also rank any other web sites you may want to test using various online tools – definitely worth a spin if you want to get some insights on where the online traffic is in Kenya as below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another website that I simply love for digital marketing measurement is Compete. Compete has both free and paid services, just like Alexa. However, one of the coolest aspects of this site is that it lets you compare a web site against the competition in terms of unique visitors. This sort of insight is invaluable if you have limited online marketing spend and want to get a “thumb suck” of where your money would be best spent between an array of online publishers, based on traffic. It’s really quite simple to use and as you can see below the following does give some interesting comparisons on traffic between three competing web sites:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This list of digital marketing measurement tools is not exhaustive. It just goes to show the various ways in which you can make informed decisions when you are considering online marketing alternatives. At the end of the day, it simply means you can make better calls on what would work best for your brand(s) or organization in the very nascent digital marketing landscape that is in Kenya, and the rest of Africa

Google announces strategic partnership with KeNIC.

Published on June 24, 2011 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Joe Mucheru of Google speaks at the KeNIC AGM

Google this morning announced a strategic partnership with the Kenya Network Information Centre (KeNIC) at the 2011 Annual General Meeting (AGM). KeNIC is the registry for Kenya’s Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) which is .KE.

Joe Mucheru from Google stated that currently their aim in Africa is to make the Internet an integral part of everyday life – business will become a later focus. The bigger issue for Google at this juncture in Africa is bringing Internet access to the masses, as well as helping generate local content.

The strategic partnership with KeNIC is to grow the number of domain names being registered under the .KE name space. According to Joe, Google is focused on the following key areas in Africa:

  • Access – Making Internet access available on as many devices as possible and especially the mobile phone. To achieve this, Google has extended Internet connectivity to Universities and is also peering its content at the Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP). Google is also pushing access to Google Apps to enhance productivity amongst Students and Faculty at Universities in Kenya.
  • Relevance - Google is pushing products and services that are localized for Kenya. One of these is Google Baraza which has increased interest in local content from a question and answer format – hence the name Baraza which means “meeting” or “forum” in Kiswahili. Google is also localizing its content into local languages and currently over 30 African languages are supported.
  • Sustainability – Google wants to make the Internet sustainable in Africa. This is being achieved through training and other forms of support such as working closely with Governments. In this way, Google is working to help create local ecosystems for its offerings and the countries where it operates in Africa.

Joe went further to point out that Africa currently has a domain name ratio of of 10,000 people to 1 domain name. In Kenya, the ratio is 2,500 people to 1 domain. The goal and part of the reason for the strategic partnership with KeNIC is to increase .KE domains to 6 or 7 times of what is currently in Kenya. Globally, the ratio of people to domains is 90:1. Google wants to work with KeNIC registrars to make this happen in Kenya too.

Victor Munyua of Google speaks at the KeNIC AGM

Victor Munyua also spoke. He is Google’s Commercialization Manager and had worked for Google in the UK for over 7 years before relocating to Kenya. Victor’s role here is to assess and realize the market for commercializing Google’s offerings in Sub-Saharan Africa. Victor stated that the Google ecosystem needs to be started and grown over time in this region.

Victor, having worked in Google in the early years in the UK, says he saw the market for online advertising grow from US 50 million per year to currently US 4 billion per year. His focus was always Google users and how to bring them to both online publishers and advertisers through Google. This “connecting” is what has made Google so successful globally and he sees the same sort of growth happening in Kenya in the future.

Victor noted that the total advertising spend in Kenya is currently US$. 600 million per year but digital advertising spend is only 1% of this figure at US$ 6 million. There is lots of room for growth as there are over 10 million Internet users in Kenya. Victor pointed out that in markets such as the UK, digital marketing is 25% of total advertising spend per year. Victor was quite bullish when he stated that digital marketing in Kenya could be worth US$ 2 Billion in 5 years time.

Joe Mucheru and Victor Munyua of Google answer questions at the KeNIC AGM

Both Joe and Victor concurred that the future of digital marketing in Kenya will be small businesses – they are the ones who will grow the market. The problem at the moment is that traditional advertising still forms the bulk of advertising spend in Kenya but this will change, as has been the case globally. They suggested that KeNIC registrars stand to gain in the transition to digital marketing from traditional marketing and they have already seen international players coming to set-up in Kenya to tap into this growth opportunity.

Victor suggested that Kenya is a “mobile first” market meaning that as much as 60% of digital marketing spend in the future could be mobile-based. The global trends that Victor saw in the UK is that initially the market is slow to adopt digital marketing but once they started getting solid results the spend on digital marketing grew dramatically over the years. The important thing to note is that to-date digital agencies are Google’s biggest partners and NOT the traditional ad agencies, per se. Therefore, KeNIC registrars need to plug into this opportunity.

Joe also noted Google will work with KeNIC stakeholders to prepare for these emerging business opportunities. However, it starts with a domain name for every business in Kenya. These businesses need a platform that is easy to understand and use to fully realize their Internet business potential. Google Apps and the Google Adwords API are already generating billions of dollars every year. Joe stated Africa is only 2% of the global Internet and so the room for growth is enormous, going forward.

 

Suddenly, Digital Marketing is Hot in Kenya.

Published on May 13, 2011 in Uncategorized. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m not sure when it happened, exactly, but digital marketing is suddenly hot in Kenya. It was not too long ago that I did a two part article here on this blog complaining about how local Ad Agencies did not “get” digital marketing and were more often than not going the tried and proven route of analogue marketing. Clearly, from what I can tell, somewhere along the way, everyone got their digital marketing groove on.

Its interesting to see how many “local” ads one can find on web sites such as Google and Facebook. These are NOT limited to the big brands such as Safaricom and Airtel. You get even really small and probably bedroom operated businesses also doing the digital marketing rounds. To be honest, its hard to find a better medium than the Internet in Kenya to deliver the best return on investment for marketing. As the saying goes, “fish where the fish are”.

A big part of the on-going digital marketing revolution in Kenya stems from the fact that we have approximately 9 million internet users at the moment. This is massive as it represents almost 25% of the Kenyan population – that’s HUGE! The Internet, as a marketing channel therefore has become truly viable and everyone is scrambling to capitalize on this growth. It seems all the large, small and everything in between sized Ad Agencies are all announcing “digital marketing” initiatives every week. In addition, the fact that over 1 million Kenyans are on Facebook and a good number are also on Twitter show that we are indeed a digitally inclined Nation.

So, here is the thing. Even as digital marketing goes into overdrive in Kenya, exactly how well are local brands doing on it? Digital marketing in itself is comprised of a myriad of sub-channels – from email, to mobile web, apps, social media, etc etc. Its actually a very broad channel and it seems that specialization is going to become key. Personally, I have recently had the opportunity to do lots of digital marketing at Dealfish and the results are more often than not eye popping – its really does work! However, specialists in digital marketing niches do deliver the best “bang for buck” in this space. Its very easy to burn cash and NOT get good results. Knowledge and experience is key. We are learning everyday.

There are also a good number of quacks cropping up in the digital marketing “industry” so one has to pay attention and choose carefully. Credentials do matter as do really creative and innovative approaches that guarantee maximum results. Its not just about buying Google Adwords and hoping for the best – optimization of digital marketing needs to be comprehensive and synergistic across all the sub-channels. It has to run the whole gamut of digital arsenal available to Kenyan brands – trust me, there are many many ways of making this happen. In concluding, the future is finally here – digital marketing is hot in Kenya and its already disrupting marketing practices that have been the norm for decades.

The Kenya Film Commission’s Animation Expo.

Published on March 20, 2011 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Kenya Noir's Chief Nyamweya (L) and Colleague.

Firstly, let me start by saying that the Sarit Centre in Westlands must be one of the toughest places to find parking on a Saturday afternoon. That being said, having spent close to 20 minutes looking for parking, I was undeterred and was firmly committed to attending the Kenya Film Commission’s Animation Expo, even if only for 30 minutes or so. I had been looking forward to it all week to see exactly what was happening in Kenya’s Animation space. I was not disappointed.

I was surprised on entering the Expo that there we’re far more companies than I had imagined who offer Animation services locally in Kenya. One definitely got a sense of a burgeoning industry that is much larger than what it looked like when I attended another event a few years ago. It seems to me that this global industry that generates billions of dollars annually is taking a firm foothold in Kenya, finally! I was also impressed with the showcased work that each firm had at the Expo meaning that there is money being made!

Kwame Nyongo from Apes in Space

The truth be said, many of the firms at the Expo seemed to be comprised of just a few people working in different capacities. By far, what seemed to be the largest was Homeboyz who have been behind the successful “Tinga Tinga Tales” that is currently airing on one of the local TV stations. In addition, Kwame Nyongo’s “Apes in Space” firm have a produced a local short animation movie called “Legend of Ngong Hills” (see trailer below). The other interesting firm I met was “Kenya Noir” which is led by Chief Nyamweya, an excellent illustrator who has now gone into animation as well.

I did not have much time at the Expo but I got to spend a bit of time at one of the talks where the turnout was excellent. Many people may not know this but there are fully accredited animation courses leading to bachelor degrees beijng offered by the likes of Shang Tao Media College who were also present at the Expo. In a nutshell, there is no reason why one cannot get in on the Animation gravy train as and when it becomes major industry in Kenya. Its already started and yesterday’s event just goes to show how big Animation is going to be here!

Kenya ICT Board Announces Private Sector Digital Content (Tandaa) Grant Winners.

Published on October 5, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I was meant to attend the Kenya ICT Board’s Dinner last week on the 30th September 2010 where they we’re to unveil the private sector digital content grant winners but I was really tired so could not make it. However, and this is something I had planned to blog about but I finally got my hands on the list of winners through the Kenya ICT Board web site this evening.

I must admit that the list included a good number of companies and organizations that are known to me including a client who asked for out help to bid for the same recently. I am actually kicking myself now for NOT making an application for a grant since from what I can tell its really good ideas that won the awards in general for both rounds (and I tend to have lots of them, or at least I think I do!).

In particular, Ask A Doc who are a Dotsavvy client (and will be partnering with them on this project) won an award for their grant application to offer a mobile-based medical information solutions (Congratulations Mwirigi Kinagwi and team!). Other winners included the likes of KenyaBuzz who are well known for their web site and e-newsletters that feature entertainment news that is regularly updated – they plan to “mobilize” their offerings and therefore reach a wider consumer market for their content.

For the full list and more details from the Kenya ICT Board web site, go here>

Kenya ICT Board’s (Tandaa) Local Content Grants Statistics.

Published on August 11, 2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

NOTE: The statistics and review results for this blog post have been taken from publicly available information currently being circulated by the Tandaa initiative of the Kenya ICT Board.

As reported on this blog over 2 months ago, The Kenya ICT Board though its local content initiative dubbed “Tandaa” issued a call for proposals from Kenyan firms and software application developers for grants to support local content and software applications.

The proposals submitted for grants are currently being reviewed by the Tandaa team at Kenya ICT Board after applications closed. They recorded a total of 2,154 applications on their online system. Of these, 667 were complete and submitted within the deadline.  With the support of the Tandaa Team at Kenya ICT Board, an independent consultant is now reviewing and grading these 667 proposals.

Given the large number of grants received, the board had had to push the announcement date for successful proposals from the 15th August 2010 to the 31st August 2010. A full report will be submitted to an independent Grants Committee in mid-August 2010. The Committee will then make the final decision and select the successful grantees. Grantees will be announced on the 31st August 2010.

The day after the grants deadline, Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa Team will send out an evaluation form to get feedback from everyone who had participated in the grant process. Below are some highlights from the evaluation and statistics on the grant process:

  • Total numbers of approved applications we’re split between 103 females and 608 males. Barely 15% of applicants were women.
  • Overall, participants were satisfied with the grant application process with 39.2% indicating they were ‘very satisfied’ and 38.4% ‘satisfied’.
  • Of respondents that did not complete the grant application process, 64% cited ‘lack of supporting documents’ as the leading cause for non-completion, while 7.4% cited ‘lack of internet access’.
  • 20% of respondents have attended a Tandaa Symposium. That comes up to almost 34% of Tandaa participants also participating in the grant application process.
  • And finally… most people submitted their proposals on the very last day! leading to a huge spike in submissions on last day

The full evaluation results can be viewed here>

The Internet in Kenya: 15 years on…

Published on March 8, 2010 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

This is a presentation I made this morning at the Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa Symposium on (digital) local content. I talked about the some of the history of the Internet since in landed in Kenya (widely) around 1995 to-date as well as implications going forward where local content is concerned. You can view the SlideShare presentation below:

Tandaa Kenya Moses Kemibaro

View more presentations from kemibaro.

Kenya switches on Digital TV (DTV) Broadcasting.

Published on December 9, 2009 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

In the news today, Kenya has launched digital television (DTV) broadcasting through the national broadcaster, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC). This is a landmark event since the full switch over from analogue TV to DTV is expected to be completed by June 2012 in Kenya. DTV will go live in Nairobi on KBC from today and is expected to be available throughout most of Kenya’s major towns and cities in time for the FIFA 2010 World Cup next year. Owners of analogue televisions will be required to acquire digital TV set-top boxes so as to access the DTV signals.

According to Wikipedia, DTV has several advantages over analogue TV, the most significant being that digital channels take up less bandwidth, and the bandwidth needs are continuously variable, at a corresponding reduction in image quality depending on the level of compression as well as the resolution of the transmitted image. This means that digital broadcasters can provide more digital channels in the same space, provide high-definition television service, or provide other non-television services such as multimedia or interactivity. DTV also permits special services such as multiplexing (more than one program on the same channel), electronic program guides and additional languages (spoken or subtitled). The sale of non-television services may provide an additional revenue source.