42 MANAGEMENTNOVEMBER 09

TECHNOLOGY

BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE, ALTHOUGH silent, is necessary and evident in an environment that is rapidly incorporating digital technology in all aspects. With the deployment of mobile and internet communication, how information is disseminated has changed drastically in terms of reach and speed. A revolution occurs when society adopts new behaviours and it is imperative that organizations come up with strategies in line with the new modes of communication for their brands. If not, they will be caught flat footed using outdated media and consequently, their brand message will not resonate with their audience.

The launching of internet broadband comes with the expectation that access will be faster, more reliable and more affordable for the Kenyan community at large. Anyone who is managing a brand therefore needs to anticipate and react to this tectonic shift in the digital arena.

What is in a brand? A brand is collectively what people say, feel and think about your product, service or organisation.

For instance, Usain Bolt of Jamaica is an individual brand that has propelled his own value and that of his country. Jamaica is no longer famous for its fiery jerk chicken but also for its exceptional sprinters. Similarly, the brand ‘Kenya’ is synonymous with long distance running, as was confirmed in the just concluded world athletic championship.

In this new era of digital media communication therefore, your brand will increasingly be about what is searched for digitally.

Digital environment Media communication is now moving away from push marketing to pull marketing. Push marketing refers to messaging that is disseminated outwardly in the hope that the audience

will understand your message. A television broadcast is a good example of push marketing. Pull marketing has more to do with inbound marketing where you are pulling your audience to come to your repository of information. A case in point is sending out e-mail messages that encourages your audience to visit your website to get more information about your products and services.

The core characteristic of any digital environment is that it is electronic and therefore dynamic. Subsequently, this is probably the most exciting time to be marketing and selling your products. The shift from push to pull marketing is creating both challenges for marketers and opportunities to engage consumers in new ways that start lasting, profitable relationships.

Battle of the three screensThis battle in the digital arena has been taken to the three screens in

Managing your brand in a digital environment

Kinoti Gituma

43MANAGEMENTNOVEMBER 09

developed countries. The three screens are television, computer and mobile phone. The television is a vestige of old media whereby communication is in monologue. A message is set up and broadcast to the masses without an interactive process.

The dawn of a new era comes with new media communication that is in the form of a dialogue with the intended audience, thereby eliciting direct feedback. In the context of Kenya, new media is led by cell phone usage. Broadband technology will hopefully expose more people to computers and laptops, thereby encouraging a more interactive process.

In terms of old media, think of a bill board advertising Watamu in Kenya as a tourist destination for Marlin fishing. This billboard is placed in the middle of New York’s Time Square, the busiest street in the world. This is all very well and good as there will be traffic that will pass by, and, depending on their level of interest, people will read and act on the message and perhaps book a trip sometime in the future. The characteristic of the billboard message is that it is static. The message will not change during the time the bill board is out there. The messaging is not targeted and will only be broadcast to whoever passes by the billboard.

Conversely, with new digital media, think of John Smith, an American in Ohio who is on his computer and is doing a search on “Marlin Fishing” on Google. Let us suppose an ad-copy on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) pops up showing Watamu in Kenya as a destination for Marlin fishing. He clicks

on the caption and he is taken to a wonderful web page where he is given more information on fishing for marlin in Kenya. This process of ensuring your information is relevant when people search for information related to your core business is helpful in terms of sales and branding. If more companies and institutions in Kenya embraced new media to disseminate their information about their core business, they would gain by improving their sales and branding.

Evolution of mediaTo examine the evolution of media, let us look at a Daily Nation article that is published both in print and on their website. The article in print will represent old media whereas the web article will represent new media. The article on the nation print media has the characteristic

of being a static monologue. It is static in the sense that you cannot change the write up or recall the article in case of errors. Instead you will have to correct the errors in the following publication. However, the same article published online can be corrected quickly since it is in digital format. The article on the internet also has a forum that creates a dialogue in that people can give their feedback and comments directly to the editors, and

those reading the article can see the various feedback and comments. If they like the article so much they can even forward the article to their friends using various forms of digital media. They can e-mail it, publish it on their Facebook profile, or even use twitter to disseminate the information. From that one article, a dialogue is created where the reader of the article can give immediate feedback to the article, share it with friends and discuss the article with their peers, thus creating a viral component of communication. This example shows that new media has various touch points and is fluid and dynamic in engagement.

That begs the question: if you had an advertisement or message in this day and age, wouldn’t it be better to craft a message and leverage the reach of digital media? Think of old media as using the shotgun approach where you shoot out the message and hope it reaches as many people as you want without knowing the exact metrics of your target audience. New media is more like a rifle gun where you pick out your target and are able to aim your message to your intended audience.

Kinoti Gituma is the Managing Director at KinConsult a new-age digital media company in the US. He has extensive experience in managing large e-Commerce projects for Fortune 500 Companies in the Silicon Valley. He has sold everything online from rugby jerseys on eBay to servers, computers and software on Google and Yahoo. kinoti@kinconsult.com or on twitter @kinconsult for any feedback or comments.

TECHNOLOGY

“If more companies and institutions in Kenya embraced new media to disseminate their information, they would gain by improving their sales and branding."