MUSICAL CHAIRS

He who pays the piper calls the TUNE.
 This saying does not apply in Kenyan Marketing and Advertising. Actually a few Corporates have tried  their hand at marketing through Music.

The first one bieng Tusker with its T.V show Tusker Project Fame

which ha run for six consecutive  seasons, the winners of the show however do not have exactly successful music careers.
 Another Trial was by Orange Telekom. Orange beat ya street.

This was a dance show targeted towards the youth

 It was televised for about three months and winners announced and that was about it.

The next casualty is Airtel. with its Airtel Trace Music Star

 the cycle continues televised for two months winner announced and show is over may be they will be another season next time.

Musical chair for those who never played this game this is how it is played. For example four chairs are arranged in a straight line and they are four participants who go round these chairs as music plays in the back ground.Immediately  the music stops all participants are supposed to be seated. Whoever is not seated is out of the game till one winner is left.

The winner of the Corporate Musical chair is Safaricom.
  Safaricom understand the concept of O M R.

To get the largest market share through music it is not a sprint but a marathon.
Safaricom have employed the  OMR  concept which means.

 1Obtain.Obtaining this is the easy part through aggressive marketing now you have a large audience and have all of their attention.

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2 Maintain. Maintenance here is  where you keep the audience involved and interested.

3.Retain. To retain now here is the most difficult part.Keep the audience always coming back year after year without fail.
Safaricom has not held any Musical competition Instead they invested in festivals.

The Safaricom Jazz Festival. Held at the  Ngong Race Course.It  was packed audience with over six thousand attendants.Every one who attended had something positive about the positive.In another 4 months there will be another Jazz Festival and even a larger audience will attend Kudos Safaricom.

SURETY

Bila kupoteza muda wacha ni seme bloggi la leo ni la kusema tangazo (advertisement) la M-shwari si shwari.
Kiswahili is really hard. It took me a slow 15 minutes to write the above sentence.

Today I am on Safaricom's case; rather, their new account known as M-shwari.

M-shwari is a brilliant concept. It is a bank account in your mobile phone. It allows you to save money, borrow money at overdraft (more money than your actual account balance) and, the best feature, at a low interest rate compared to other financial institutions.

I believe M-shwari should get a lot of awards. Through M-shwari, one can save without standing in long queues. Another huge issue it has tackled is the accesibility to loans for the common mwananchi, as well as the enlightenment of the saving culture to the masses. In time, I believe it should be opened up for children as well. They are, after all, the future.

There is only one major problem with it; its latest TV commercial it is not informative. I believe a good advert can be in Chinese and I will still understand it.The TV commercial target market was the youth.but it could well be mistaken for a music video; it's funky and hyped. And all we see...is funk and hype. We don't know details about the product...except that there's a chick in the video buys a laptop in the end. Being simple is best. It touches more hearts and more minds. There is a place for hype, yes, but what is the point if the message is not communicated? The excitable 'cool dude' who jumps out of the limousine is supposed to be a representation of today's average young person; to me, this is false.

This TV commercial is ambiguous.Yes, the youth are full of energy but not all of them are searching for the limelight.