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CONFESSIONS OF AN ADVERTISING MAN: KENYA EDITION

Episode 1

Eight years ago, I had a moment of introspection and reflected on the journey of my career at that point in time:

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So it’s been 20 years and and a month in the advertising business.

Some journey, its been.

I’ve faced danger, working for, and with, some really stupid people. And some joy. Working for, and with some very talented people. I’ve hit the high notes, and many, many low ones. I’ve been young, and now I’m old. Relatively.

I cursed tomorrow. And now its standing right in front of me. Staring back with an overgrown beard and uncombed hair skirting a balding pate, cheeks puffing out as if to say “Here we are, then.”

I’ve laughed more than I will ever remember. Like the night that Trevor Beattie awarded me the APA Craft Award for copywriting, making me the best advertising writer in the republic. And a little beyond it.

I’ve been angry. Very angry. Like the time my bogan Australian boss threatened to sack me for winning very many creative awards on that magical night fueled by Trevor Beattie. Tim Pearson scarred me for life. Or the night I got very, very upset with my inane, bad-English-speaking-Spanish-Brazilian Creative Director and yelled my lungs out at him. In Received Pronunciation English, recently acquired via a university degree in that language. With my Art Director, Timmy Ondeng, frozen in disbelief as I took my things home in a carton, singing the English football hooligans’ chant: “You’re getting sacked in the morning…sacked in the mooooorning, you’re getting sacked in the mooooorning…”

I learnt how to be a good Creative Director from Judy Kibinge. I learnt about good art direction from Maggie Owino. I learnt about leadership and managing clients from Ndirangu wa Maina. I travelled the world with Thierry Dubus, and picked up valuable lessons on Media Planning from Lenny Ng’ang’a. From Bipin Soni I learnt about the courage it took to hire a black, 29-year-old kid as Creative Director at a time when Creative Directors in Nairobi were invariably white and old. And mostly clueless. And from Zadock Koola, I learnt exactly how to crash-land your own agency and blow up the tiny fragments into oblivion. In dramatic slow motion.

And so I will scratch balding pate and try to figure out where these 20 years have gone. An eventful journey in its own right. I hope you will enjoy the recollections.

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Prelude

After 28 years, this is my final week in the advertising business. It has been a wonderful journey and I am grateful to the industry that built my career and taught me everything I know about work, about professionalism, about business. The ad industry gave me the tools that I take with me to the next episode of my professional career. As with all things in life, it gave me plenty of joy and much sorrow in equal measure.

And so in the following episodes, I look back to some of the outstanding stories of these last 28 years in the…

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Telkom Bizz

Telkom Kenya were launching a bouquet of products and attendant offers targeted at Small and Micro Entrepreneurs who were mostly working from their SOHO ( Small Office or Home Office) as the Covid pandemic came to an end. 

We developed the nomenclature and advertising for this bouquet of products.

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I enjoyed writing this print advert for Bank Of Africa’s campaign to announce their cross-border business banking product. 

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Running Water

Saroyo bottled water was positioned as the 'Water for champions' due to the brand's association with Kenya's athletics legend, Kipchoge Keino as well as its popularity with Eldoret-based world champion runners.

I subsequently wrote and art directed this print ad and poster, premised on the fact that water makes up almost 75% of our bodies.  

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Saracen Media’s 10th

A few years ago, our close mates from Kenya's first media independent were celebrating their 10th anniversary and asked us to create a print advert as part of their celebrations.

Being a media planning and buying agency, I wrote and art directed this copy-led full page advert that lived out Saracen's philosophy.

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If you closely follow Kenya's social media scene, you probably have watched the hilarious videos of the extremely talented Erastus Ayieko Otieno, better known as "Flaqo". 

Flaqo became an online sensation playing several members of one dysfunctional Kenyan family; Baba Otis, the obnoxious Pater Familias, Mama Otis, his sadistic wife and mother of his two children. The children themselves are the constantly perplexed Otis and his adolescent sister, Akoth. 

All four characters are played skillfully by Erastus and edited cleverly into single video skits. Introducing a new character in his mix, Flaqo brought in Bakari the choir master and together with Baba Otis and Otis himself, we employed the three characters in this cleverly edited commercial for Menengai Cream Laundry Bar, directed by Martin Munyua through Dreamcatcher productions.

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MOVE

In 2003, NIC, which was hitherto an assert finance bank, was entering the retail banking segment and needed communication that would launch them into this sector and also create enough differentiation to gain traction at launch.

We began the process by exploring the competitive environment into which NIC was entering, with a view to create differentiation by disrupting the conventions of retail banking and building a break-through product that would instantly get attention and induce trial.

We then explored the target market from which the bank was aiming to recruit:

-  Who were they? -  What age were they? -  What was their lifestyle? -  What were their social habits? -  What did they like most about their current bank? -  What did they find most frustrating about their current bank?

During a period when banks in Kenya were mostly inflexible and scored rather poorly on customer needs, it wasn’t surprising to find that most of the target group were unhappy and dissatisfied with their current banks:

So we asked them what they would do if there was a bank that satisfied their frustrations. The answer was unanimous: They all said they would “MOVE”.

And thus was born the verbal identity of NIC’s retail bank.

Working closely with the bank, we developed a retail banking product that fit seamlessly with the lifestyles of our target consumers. We then created the entire range of communication, from logo to stationery, to the design of the banking boutiques known as “Move Zones”, the design of the cheque books, colourways, design of bank statements, etc.

Everything was deliberately designed to look fresh, trendy, and very un-banklike.

The Result:

MOVE was an instant success and became the buzz-word among the target audience. Everyone wanted to open a MOVE account. But most importantly, over 60,000 MOVE accounts were opened within the first 6 months, and forever changed the banking landscape in Kenya.

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Persil

OG+A’s unique positioning as a Kenyan centric agency won us the Persil advertising account for whom I wrote this campaign that weaved between digital and traditional. The campaign began life as a series of video webisodes on FaceBook that told the story of two lovers and how Persil interplayed in their relationship until they ultimately decide to get married, at which point the campaign left the Digital platforms for the traditional with a TV commercial and Out Of Home executions of their wedding.

The campaign may be viewed on Facebook at:

Webisode 1: https://www.facebook.com/PersilKenya/videos/729601580550447/

Webisode 2: https://www.facebook.com/PersilKenya/videos/732792610231344/

Webisode 3: https://www.facebook.com/PersilKenya/videos/737254753118463/

Webisode 4: https://www.facebook.com/PersilKenya/videos/754547268055878/

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OG+A Self promo

I returned to Kenya to set up my own agency, OG+A. As a start-up fighting for space, clients, recognition and revenues in a market dominated by international agency networks, we found that we had to define ourselves very clearly in order to gain any kind of foothold in the market.

And so we identified a niche in which no other agency was playing: An agency that was run by Kenyans for Kenyan consumers. And, employing uniquely Kenyan iconography and cultural nuances, I wrote this campaign.

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Classic Cricket

Collins Obuya was the outstanding star of Kenya’s magical run in the 2003 Cricket World Cup, where they finished in 3rd place. Soon after, we featured him in this advert that I wrote to promte a fund-raising event to support grassroot development of cricket:  

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Nissan Hardbody Pickups

This was an extremely enjoyable film project that I wrote for Nissan’s Hardbody pick ups in 2003. Needless to say, the Hardbody pick up consequently came to be known affectionately as “Atoti”: 

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Eveready Batteries

Eveready were sponsoring Kenyan athletics, the world’s most dominant middle and distance running country. So we announced it thus: 

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Nation FM

At the turn of the Millenium, we had the Nation Media advertising account at McCanns and they commissioned us to run a campaign for their then brand new radio station. I wrote this ad as a result: 

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Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic launched in Kenya in 2007 and, to announce the airline's sponsorship of Kenya's national Rugby Sevens team, I wrote this ad that was also erected as a billboard at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.

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Celtel Nigeria

ZK Advertising was a "home-grown" African advertising network with offices in 16 countries around the continent. In 2006, I was working for ZK as Executive Creative Director in Johannesburg, South Africa, with responsibility for the network’s creative output across those 16 geographies. So I went to work for a period in Lagos as we launched the Celtel mobile network in Nigeria. With this beautifully colourful film that I wrote: 

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Paging Services Limited

In the late 1990s, before mobile telephony became widely available in Kenya, pagers had a short-lived dominance as the device of necessity for instant communication. For a very short period, people needed pagers and our client, Paging Sevices Limited, needed to push them. With commercials like this one that I wrote in 1998: