There’s an Ad Agency on Mobaso Road in Nairobi

Do Ad Networks Practice Double Standard When It Comes To African American Consumers? Those of you who know me, know that I’m a research nut. I like to find information and I’ll go to great lengths to get at interesting facts. This inquisitiveness has served me well over the span of my career. Information is power, it helps you prove points. It helps shine a light on inequities. I like to think ultimately, information leads to truth and truth has interesting qualities. William Cullen Bryant said that “Truth crushed to the earth will rise again”. So, follow along as I tell you what I just found out. It all started with an article I saw yesterday that talked about Omnicom’s TBWA setting up shop in Nairobi to compete in the fast growing Kenyan advertising market, which according to sources grew 30% last year. 30% is nothing to sneeze at and their clients GSK, Visa and Unilever among others are all blue top shelf clients. I started snooping around to find out more about the Kenyan market. There are a lot of international agencies there from the US, Asia and The UK. McCann and Ogilvy are there as are Porter Novelli and Y&R. (Y&R is the agency I refer to in the title –they are in Panesar’s Centre on Mobaso Road). The firms there handle many international clients like Toyota and Coca Cola as well as local clients like Telkom Kenya and Jamii, a broadband provider. The Gross Nation Income of Kenya is $68 Billion. Its population is 40 Million people. By contrast the calculated GNI of African Americans who are about 39 Million people is 803 Billion and the median household income is $35,425 compared to $2,000 per year for the average Kenyan family. What is my point? Simply that Advertising agencies and their holding companies go to the far reaches of the globe and do hand-to-hand combat for market share in one of the poorest countries in the world. Kenya currently ranks 180th out of 210 countries yet go out of their way to justify why they will not target the African American market and use the proven market experts to do it. I call on clients that know they derive a significant share of their business from the African American market (If you don’t know call me and I’ll run a quick GfK MRI analysis on your brand and help you out) to get with the program, do what’s right and spend your marketing dollars with the advertising agencies, media companies, newspapers, radio stations and consumers from whom you derive significant profit.