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Kenyanteen reaches a highly influential audience of agency, brand and media executives as well as social marketers trying to access the youth market

Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Humiliation of Caster

The opinions on this blog are mine and mine alone (Mojo Sojoh), and here's my take on the now infamous 'Caster Saga.' First and foremost, as I Kenyan I know that should SA athlete Caster Semenya lose her 800M World Title, then the gold would go to our own super athlete Janeth 'Eldoret Express" Jepkosgei. However, I have always been of the opinion that a victory is always sweeter when you win it outright, and not when it is "handed" to you.
That said, I'm appalled by how athletics governing body, IAAF, has handled the entire issue. First and foremost, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. If there were doubts about Semenya's gender, then the IAAF should've dealt with the matter discreetly and contacted both Semenya and South Africa's version of 'Athletics Kenya' directly. When athletes are busted of being drug cheats, are there speculations flying about everywhere? No. People may be suspicious of an athlete because they may be performing spectacularly well (we all love Usain Bolt, but I bet there's no one on the planet who hasn't speculated that he's on some Jamaican concoction - especially the Americans). So how come the media isn't rife with stories that Usain Bolt is a drug cheat? Dude went from having a personal best time of 10.03 seconds in 2007 to being a sub 9.58 in less than 2 years... That seems pretty suspicious to me.
Additionally, how many well built, flat-chested, deep voiced, facial hair-having female athletes are out there? Well, a huge majority of all professional female athletes look pretty masculine to me. So how come the media's buzzing about Semenya's gender? I don't want to speculate but I suspect it has to do with the world being more comfortable with Africans as underachievers. Africans cannot achieve extraordinary things in the shortest time possible. And if we do achieve extraordinarily, because we're inherently corrupt, we'd have to accomplish such a feat through unfair means. Again, I'm just speculating...
So let's all just end this speculation about Semenya until the facts speak for themselves please.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Final Back To School Shopping Offer of 2K9

Time flies when you’re busy connecting your clients to the youth market!

Below please find our final Back-To-School shopping offer for 2009



Thursday, May 21, 2009

Youth & Sports Marketing

Last April, sports fans' attention was focused on over 60 basketball, hockey, 7’s rugby, cross country and swimming teams where thousands of athletes were vying for a national title in the KSSSA (Kenya Secondary Schools Sports Association) National 1st Term Games. Traditionally, national brands dominate sponsorship in the anticipation that the tournament's glow will rub off on their brands. The hope: that millions of fans (courtesy of television and print media) will also notice their brands! Indeed, marketing your brand during the national championships means you’re part of something historic and magical – like when a guy named Biko Adema single-handedly destroyed Maseno in 2005, or when in 2001 a barefoot Alice Timbilil outclassed the cross country field and then a week later repeated the same feat at the senior level...

But sponsoring the National Games, often means dropping a boatload of cash, and that's where most brands give up. They decide not to play. Here's the truth: You don’t have to spend millions to be a part of the action.
By hand-picking the right schools and putting your shillings directly into the school community, your brand can share in the excitement of high school sports and win some fans - while not breaking the bank.
If you’re running a brand on a tight budget and looking to take advantage of the goodwill and high brand engagement that sports marketing delivers, here are the schools I would recommend you look at targeting. These schools attract a combined spectator audience of more than 250,000 (this is far much more than the national championships can deliver). This audience comprises of the school’s student community, the general student community (not from the respective school) that often visits these schools for organized tournaments and the community around the school that often comes to watch the games.
These schools dominate their regions, have enthusiastic fans, and boast interesting centres of activity that allow you to reach students in a new way.
You should also know that due to the free education program, non-educational activities like sports have had to contend with serious budget cuts. Schools are now more accommodating to corporate sponsors who add value to their sports teams. Gone are the days of ‘in kind’ partnerships, when providing the school with a crate of soda was deemed as sponsorship, school administrations are now much wiser and want hard cash to run their sports teams.

My Top 5 Schools For Effective In-School Sports Marketing
1. Laiser Hill Academy – Sitting comfortably in the heart of Kiserian, Laiser Hill is a mixed school with a population of about 700. Currently the National & Rift Valley champions, Laiser Hill has a fanatical following around the area and are the toast of Kajiado District. Laiser Hill’s support also spills over to the Nairobi suburbs of Ongata Rongai and Kiserian.
2. St. Austin’s Academy – Prestigious, up market and synonymous with high school hoops. When you need to align your brand with the A,B market, look no further than this institution. They also host a lot of inter-school activities which target similar upmarket, private institutions, so partnering with this school’s basketball team will give you major inroads into this market.
3. Maseno High School – Nothing says you connect more with Nyanza’s youth than ‘endorsing’ Maseno High as the Provincial Basketball Champions. A simple billboard should do the trick. Remember the ‘President Obama’ endorsement billboards in December last year?
4. Mang’u High School – Probably has one of Kenya’s most influential alumnus associations (which boasts President Kibaki). Align yourself with the success of their basketball and hockey teams, and the influential alma mater factor is never too hard to wiggle in.
5. Mombasa Baptist - This institution’s campus is loaded with centres of activity. The fact that it is mixed and has a large population only adds to its attractiveness.

If you feel that this type of approach will work for you, why not take advantage of the 2nd term games? Remember, the 2nd term games calendar is entirely different from the 1st term, thus you need to engage an entirely different set of schools.