Flux and the Farmer: the evolving concept of marketplace and of “online” in Africa
There is a digital convergence happening in rural Kenya that echoes, somewhat faintly, the combination of factors that led to the first phase of market growth and creation. In the late 1980s, for about a decade or so, enough market forces converged in rural Kenya, particularly centered around the Chuka to Meru market region just […]
Gamer Gen: Civ III as virtual MBA?
This post was written on 29th November 2005 in San Francisco Back in May 2005, I wrote a post on the book “Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever” where the authors, John C. Beck and Richard Wade, argue that gamers glean valuable knowledge from their pastime and that they’re poised to […]
Thinking like a user centered designer about brand management
Design is fundamentally a value system, a set of principles, that is then manifested in tangible form. Conventionally, this has been known as setting the design criteria. However, rather than specification guidelines, as used in engineering, if one were to change metrics and numbers into values or emotional responses, one could, in fact, create a […]
Empowerment and co-creation – Entering new markets with a long established brand
From personal experience, the biggest frustration with being a cog in the remote outpost of a global behemoth that actually has to implement or execute the marketing, advertising or branding strategy in the field is tussling with the brand’s identity. Clausewitz has said, It may be of interest to future generals to realize that one […]
Part 3: Three weeks waiting for Result
This is part three and was first published on December 2nd, 2005 while I was living in San Francisco. You’d think that the coolest thing that could happen to you in the world would be to come into work whenever in the morning as long you managed to saunter in by 11ish, have lunch that […]
Part 2: Result in transition
Hmm, I was overwhelmed there for a minute, for this post is about the events of that one day when the future existence of Result, as an entity, as a company, as the direct marketing arm of McCann Erickson Worldwide would still exist. For there were just six people in the office, not counting the […]
How Result became Result:McCann – A trilogy of tragedy and comedy
This is part one and was first published on December 1st, 2005 while I was living in San Francisco. Life was a peach for Rajat Sethi while he was at Tara Sinha McCann-Erickson in the mid-nineties. As senior vice-president he was looking after an array of brands and serving their ‘traditional’ communication needs. His world […]
The need for human agency: Is the middleman always a monster?
Mobile phone charging receipt, Kenya Photo credit: Niti Bhan The unfair demonisation of the middleman is apparent in this recent article on solar power products for the low income market in Africa. “Putting African ‘power pimps’ out of business” is the headline and the rest of the text goes downhill from there: It’s hard to […]
International development in the year 2015: Q&A with a 3rd world brown woman
Naomi, posing for my camera in her role as poor African farmer’s wife Naomi was my first exposure to poverty as expediency in rural Africa. She and her husband are the responsible family unit for a multi kitchen homestead in Makueni, Kenya. They themselves own a Maruti van which he runs as a matatu plying […]
Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are…
“The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.” ~ David Brin 2. How can technology best be used to change humanitarian practices that may appear to you to be evolved forms of imperialism? […]
