Fresh marketing eyes take on Rwanda

Is this marketing? How to create breakthrough?

Amid the visual clutter that is Rwandan marketing in a growth economy.

Toni's day one : "The challenge of marketing in Rwanda aside from money is lack of business differentiation. And our “clients” in Rwanda are not unlike clients from my marketing days in the US. They recognize the value of marketing, but don’t realize how difficult it is to define your business in an authentic way that not only sets you apart, but that also sets the barrier high so a competitor can’t copy it so quickly.. When we visited Peggy and Pierrette’s freight forwarding business today, their office is a courtyard of 15 similar businesses, not one seemingly offering any services or benefits different than the other. Offering new services that would set Peggy and Pierrette’s business apart—like direct to the door deliveries--means they need to acquire a truck—not affordable for them right now.

There are multinational brands here. We must have passed half a dozen Coke kiosks today, Billboards, electronic ones at that, are prolific in Kigali, the real estate taken by the banks, telecom providers and a government Aids campaign."

And Athena's take: "Today I visited four of our enterprising Rwandan associates -- Francoise, with her lively restaurant and catering business, Speciose with her centrally-located flower and event planning business, Languida who is the perfect person to work with grieving families to arrange funeral services, and Sylvie, a visionary business woman who owns a beautiful center with a spectacular view and acres of manicured grounds where she hosts weddings and events and has an amusement park for kids.

Marketing in Rwanda equals word-of-mouth. In each of my four meetings the recurring theme was that the best way to get customers is through one person telling another about their business. Marketing practices that are common for us -- business cards, brochures, newspaper ads, signs outside a business -- are not a given here. The challenge is to determine the balance between working within the cultural norms and expectations and helping our associates break out of the box and get noticed. So many of the businesses here offer exactly the same products and services. The key will be to help our associates differentiate themselves from the competition and get the word out in a way that their target customers will respond positively. This is what we'll all be working on in the next several days."