Mark Kaigwa — transcript

Nendo

This transcript is generated automatically by YouTube and has not been checked by a person. It misspells names and mishears words, particularly around Kenyan English and company names, so read it as a guide to the conversation rather than a quotable record. Each timestamp opens the video at that moment.

0:04 [Music] good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to episode 14 of the African do podcast uh we are Channing them out fast and furious now I think we have gotten the hang of it and this episode we are very pleased to have H H when I met him he was a young man but now he's not not so young man he was single now he's a family man but Mark Kaa of nend and nend is a very interesting business which we'll hear uh a lot more about today behind the scenes business Mark welcome to the African do podcast yeah lard really happy to be here and I watched you get in the podcasting game and like you said uh familiar with just your history in business in hospitality and yeah honored to be here and to share uh share mics uh with you to talk today excellent so maybe let's start with what nend is because nend is one of those behind the scenes company I I like to

1:02 think of you guys like um there are these businesses which I find really exciting but they're not visible to the public eye you know like the guys who do Fiber Optic Cables you don't know them but the cables get to your house and you get your internet and I kind of view nend in that lens because um we've had a lot of talk about data and how data is the new oil and we we are all on social media there's so much social media Brands you can't not have a social media presence so let's start with what nend is thanks so I think nend today we are an award-winning research marketing and training agency based here in Nairobi working across the continent and that last part of across the continent is really big for us we always say when you know I'm challenging my teammates they're challenging me we're not playing for Nairobi we're not playing for Westlands we're not playing

1:58 for you know Kenya we really want to have a continental mindset and the problem we're seeking to solve is we found that on the continent today we have hundreds of millions of Internet users right and depending on which country you look at it's you know in Kenya it's sort of the high 20s depending on who you ask and that's from you know a headsman who has a Cabe who will check in to a place where he's visiting a cyber cafe or using someone else's smartphone down to perhaps you and me podcast Studio bright lights and we are perpetually connected now within that there's a spectrum of connection our reason that we exist is that people are creating like you said data okay so they are visiting websites they are downloading and using apps they are transacting and most importantly they're transacting not just with Commerce and funds but with their time and attention

2:50 and this changes things from a few decades ago so nendo's whole job our reason that we exist is we deliver what we call grounded African insights and Trends to the world what that means is that our job is to figure out the African Nuance behind how somebody stays connected what they do when they're connected and basically take that and make it mean something to Brands to businesses to the public to the media and to Society at large okay and when we're packaging that we're doing it as people who live here who are from here and who basically are publishing this in a way which is our aspiration that's world class okay and so at least forand we take a lot of Pride that we're somewhat in the back end like you said but also somewhat visible because we've been in the New York Times twice we've been on you know the BBC North over a dozen times we've probably been on every

3:44 major radio uh and TV station and print newspaper in Kenya because when we say something is happening when we say something is about to happen one we've you know by God's grace we've had a great track record of predicting that's where the trends come in but with the sites some things are not just a trend that comes and goes they become like a tried and tested principle that's intellectual property of nendo given to the world in service to them to understand the African digital consumer or what we call the connected class of citizens here and across the continent so the African digital consumer is a new can I call it a new beast in the market it's not it's not something that is very old yeah in a Kenyan context that would be what maybe give it 10 15 years you know when we really got connected yeah um so let's go to the beginning of nend where does nend start and uh you you were then I

4:45 remember quite a young boy Nando is 11 11 years old this year is it 11 or you're in your 12th year so we'll be 10 according to the government of the Republic of Kenya in in April so so I think the idea for nandoo definitely started over a decade ago yes and it started off as a number of businesses do as a business name and then as that started to pick up it's like okay you can't really take these checks as you knowa mark were trading as nend Ventures and so it became a and what were you doing then so I'd say my journey starting nend mirrors the rise of social media and alternative media and the example I like to give I was working in advertising as a copywriter at an agency in Nairobi um in I want to say this is 09 and I had been on Twitter for a couple years I had been publishing a column in marketing Africa you know shout out to William CBO you know just giving me inches in the in the in the

5:52 magazine just saying just go to town and if I show you some of those articles about social media in the workplace like some of them are they've been by God's grace timeless so so it was speaking into our context a way of thinking that was changing about employees about companies about connecting with people online and what happened is I remember just from my tweets and so on we were coming uh down thica Road one day from a meeting a client meeting it had gone well and L M then uh you know a very a fast Li version of him um that that was at KTN he had finally convinced his producers to do a social media interview on the air and he went online and he basically just put it into the ether on Twitter who should I invite I've finally done it's been months in the making it's going to be you know I think 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 the following day and I turn on my my

6:41 NOK at the time and and uh a bunch of people have said me so lar is like hey you know I need your number and there was no DMS at the time right so we we're quickly just organizing um and blessed the people at this lovely agency I worked at I called in semi sick that next morning and then they saw me on TV so that was a bit of a an issue but but they understood because they the column everything was on the books and that for me proved something interesting I was um gosh I can't remember how old I was but of course a number of years ago and what fascinated me is there was no experts in this new sector it's a bit kind of like what we have in in AI which I'm sure we'll talk about now it's a sector that's appending so many things yes and the way that you get ahead is simply observing really well learning rapidly and trying to build things in public and

7:27 connect the dots with our part of the world so nendo started when I realized that not only did I end up leaving uh that agency at the time I started Consulting and then I saw there's room here to create a company to do it bigger than me and most importantly to create a culture so the thing with nendo that I take a lot of pride in is the type of core values we have the type of culture we're trying to build as a business because I I feel like that's the greatest service I can give my teammates is is what type of environment professionally we come of age riding these waves of interest uh clients interests uh for us personally um and all that that line up with with our mission very interesting so you get to see basically you you spend your days or Nando spends its days um interrogating consistently our digital lives is that is that that a fair exactly right yes

8:22 and maybe now to to to contextualize it for the audience we can just take a hypothetical company Legacy company in let's say banking yeah in Kenya uh has not has struggled um to adapt to this new um new reality of where the market is going digitally yeah and a lot has transitioned from Radio TV uh Billboards to a lot of digital so I come to you I'm running that bank and I say listen guys we we need your help we are blind to this digital world we know we need to play there um how do we walk us through where we start yeah yeah so I think uh for nendo if we take a bank that wants to compete that is in again a very mature sector like that we will try to help them going back to what we do with data and insights on the landscape so let's let's walk through like we are exactly so so one we look at consumers and their pain points even of other Banks we'll say where is the shoe

9:33 pinching how do we figure that out because there are hundreds of thousands of online complaints okay about other Banks even their own sometimes they don't even see the full picture of that so there's a public suggestion box over a decade old full of where it's hurting for even the biggest banks that you can see now from fraud to mobile um access on your digital channels response times to even just issues like cards and so on and so forth so that just gets us the digital voice of the customer now as n we realized you can't bet everything on that so we built an offline research business as well so sometimes we'll actually bring customers into a room do focus groups you know do phone call based surveys or do online or face-to-face surveys because that gives us a richness to the data so we sometimes we start with that yeah we'll also look at like I said so com com

10:23 consumer intelligence right from what's Happening online then competitive intelligence who do you truly compete with if you had a tier two bank compete with another tier two bank with the most respect right or obviously aim for one of the big ones whoever you are right do you serve farmers do you Ser small businesses whever so we'd figure that out we get that competitive intelligence as well because we're looking to get people to do something pretty hard which is switch Banks or at least open open up banks in the last two years part of what we've seen that has helped a lot in this sector is being what we'd call meaningfully differentiated cuz banking insurance and others sometimes it's just different flavors of vanilla all have online banking they all have an app yes this one looks better than that one yes that one's easier to use no crazy

11:05 Innovation exactly so who have we seen innovate if you you know and I might not name the bank but if you drop EMP PESA fees you say I'm not going to charge that's being meaningfully different that one is going to is going to change you say in retail because what happens now is all this money in Money out that people do with mobile money if I'm willing to eat that right so yes that's a cost for me but it's I've passed that on to you I'm meaningfully different so the question is what can they do meaningfully different so for us is to really solve bus problems but bring in data from these Public public channels complaints comments compliments and then help them to now position themselves even if they say we're not changing anything we're the same flavor of vanilla that's where we get the creative or the marketing side of nend and what we've been in the habit of doing the

11:51 last couple years is part of what we call Behavior change marketing so how do I use data points and insights to lead to either changing people's perception or their behavior right and so that needs us to map out the customer Journey learn the customer better and then say where the places we can truly Dominate and from that we'll either train up members of their team to level up because it's not always that you farm this workout yes the digital or marketing or Communications agency world has changed from these big retainers two decades ago where they just paying you multiple millions of shillings to just crank out content and things for Billboards for and otherwise to where now it's very Project based a lot more strategic and some things have come in house so it's also become a bit commoditized so some people are struggling with the idea of what the value of paying experts to do this work

12:43 is but that's that's how we do it for so for a bank start off with data find some of the gaps that that data exposes from the customer side in serving them better and keeping them or from the competitor side in knowing their pain points and recruiting them and then take that into messaging creatively and try to find something that's meaningfully different and get that out to millions of people be competitive be creative be slightly risky because that's what works is being um you know relevant and if there's one problem I have with a bit of way the industry works and banking is notorious for this I can bring you five to seven different banks and it's all I hate to say it instantly forgettable like the communications that they're putting out the majority of it it's a stock image it's their logo it's it's a caption it's a bunch of hashtags and it's not

13:32 meaningful to me all the millions of people who who will be forced to see it and so it's instantly forgettable in a world where you'd rather and we we have a video on our YouTube how you change that yeah so for us I think one we say one of the biggest mistakes that Brands and businesses made in the digital uh economies we moved from a world where you had to work so hard to make a full page ad we have a full page ad from I think the 80s in a Kenyan magazine and and I've met the creatives who put that work together it took weeks they agorize over every last detail and then they released it and it was in front of the whole country they had their full attention nowadays even this podcast we'd be lucky if people actually like watch it start to finish most people will consume Clips so so because of this world we're in the mistake people think

14:19 is they think I have infinite room to keep talking so as a brand I want to talk about anything and everything I have a dozen products I have five days in the week I want to talk about every product all the time and what you find is that what we call the content calendar is just this never ending treadmill you're running without ever really getting anywhere because you think there's Infinite Space so we've been saying for years we at nend with what we call our digital audit we can cut your content calendar in half maybe by 2/3 and you won't lose any reach anyway in fact you finally get time to breathe and think what do I meaningfully want to say and how do I make it look a lot better and distinctive and that's the mistake people make is there in this NeverEnding race to say good morning and hello and have a stock image and so they it just loses I mean even AI it's a lot

15:04 of AI generated images so the heart of the the the answer there is what we need to do differently is to just stop and pause and ask is this working and what are we trying to say and is it us talking it's all about our product is it you and your life and too many Brands they're not thinking about you at all and so they're thinking about my product my loan app my deposit taking mobilization like campaign my objective my kpi and if we switch that you find that you can be what we call a challenger brand and get significantly better traction and Reach people and hopefully acquire them at least get them to change their perception of you and your offering because you're not in the same digital Rat Race that so many social media agencies and brands are where they're just publishing without the time to stop and fully think about why are we doing this is it working and I'll give you a quick example when we

15:59 we've worked with banks a bit and um in many sectors and and I I once asked you know hey which of your Banks actually cut a cake when you got to like 100,000 followers or a million followers and so many people rais their hand and let me tell you Lena that metric today is meaningless I hate to say it because it doesn't matter how many followers you have anymore right Facebook Instagram Tik Tok you name it they won't even let you reach the followers you have you spend so what what matters so what matters is the fact that well there's no free lunches online what does that mean mean it's pay to play so what every brand whether an that starts tomorrow or a bank with 3 million likes on Facebook everyone has to pay to reach people now if you're going to pay to reach people you have to take your time to figure out how can this work on its own how can

16:44 this achieve some sort of meaningful result apart from I saw it and I skipped it right I saw it and I swiped past it but I saw it and I paused for a bit because it made me smile it made me think it got me to do what's called some sort of thumb shoing activity yeah and you don't have to do that 10 times a day or 10 times a week so that's why you can slow down the content calendar think a bit about what you're trying to say and best of all know a bit more about the lives and audiences that you're serving your customers because that's where you start so if I get you correct yours is an intricate dance between the knowledge and insights and the production of content and maybe even product yes so it cannot in your world these cannot Co they cannot be separated in the sense that do you feel that one of the challenges you're facing in the market is that

17:39 you're dealing with a lot of radio TV billboard advertising marketers who are now trying to figure this world and what they're doing is cutting and pasting thinking from Radio TV advertising into this medium that's not that is is that part of the challenge I say that's part of the challenge but you've nailed where nendo comes in because what we have at nendo is typically separate suppliers and separate companies to many organizations yes because they see research sometimes as what we call a vitamin okay not a painkiller okay so people are seeing and saying wow you know this is so great Mark best of luck to you and you're like no no no I'm sorry you need what I have to say no no that's really nice right I was put it in the in the in the to-do list someday maybe I I might work with with with these you know these guys and yet you know the Challenger Brands we've

18:36 worked with the nonprofit organizations we've worked with we've had the great pleasure of being able to see real meaningful results for those businesses either at a research standpoint or on the marketing side but the two of them when they work together work really well because a lot of people come and say I have a Target I have an objective I just need to take a box right with the marketing with the coms I need stuff to go out but they want it to convert they want it to work and that needs you to again go back to what we said about being meaningfully different um or differentiated um and distinctive as well right just so that you don't blend in the sea of sameness so that's another thing is just this aspect of how everybody looks like they're wearing the same school uniform as Brands we need to break that apart and unshackle creative

19:20 and and brand Minds from that in in favor of being in a way where I can say I see these colors or this style and I believe I already know which organiz a that is that's a great example of distinctiveness and it can happen with smmes and with big corporates as well so let's let's let's dial back a bit and and delve into the business side which I know we talk about quite a bit with you but you're selling a service that the people you need to sell that service to using your vitamin painkiller analogy haven't NE necessarily accepted that they need your service yeah I'd say I'd say here's the interesting thing on the research side just briefly just to the previous point you made my belief is that we can't look at digital like a hammer and nail situation where it's like Mark what's the answer to this it's digital right because I'll give you a quick example there are millions of Kenyans who still use

20:29 Facebook today and when I say that sometimes in a you know nicely lit you know place like yeah like oh I haven't used Facebook in a year and like what do you mean there's Kenyans on Facebook and yet 18 to 24 in Kenya is the biggest group of Facebook users here now why is that our hypothesis at nend is because of what's called free Facebook so because I don't have to pay with my bundles my regular data I'm going to use that so it's secretly one of the reasons that's keeping Facebook relevant but when we start to look broadly we we've encountered a problem now which says people can be online people can have smartphones but they'll economize their data so what does that mean digital is not a solution unto itself so believe it or not the last couple years um radio and TV have had record setting years for viewership really that's correct so it

21:17 still has relevance I like I'll tell you nendo in the last couple years we've run Billboards for clients we've done radio in fact we have radio on right now as we speak I have some tactical stuff going on and we are always recommending TV because when you're researchers you don't want to say I'm a digital researcher so I can tell you what to do on Tik Tok and yes I can Tik Tok has its ends I mean I we know we can talk about it you know Kenyans it's like a new start we've been throwing around as nend Kenyans upload according to one calculation we made between October and uh and December of 2024 1.3 million Tik toks a day a day 13.3 million Tik toks a day so we can talk about that because if you're asking for digital insights nendo has always that's been our calling card but when you ask us for what's effective as researchers as strategic thinkers

22:09 that's why we show you that TV still has a place but you raised a good point if I bring a TV mindset the old school mindset and I don't embrace the fact that it's possible to be on TV but not be as effective it's possible to be on radio and not be um um as efficient right with the way that I go about it why because I'm used to I want these two hostes to talk about about me all week okay fine that's one way but that's not the only way and if you're trying to be distinctive you have to find other ways to reach people MH that's some of the questioning that people don't do because in marketing there's some of what I would call the sacred cows don't touch this don't touch that you know we don't change this and yet that's part of what you know this digital economy is teaching us you need to be willing to change and make adjustments so that you

22:54 can actually find the key recipe that works for you and it may have more online offline I should say then you might think so how do you live then as an entrepreneur because you you have 10 years so 10 years you're well seasoned you've been in the trenches you know but you're selling a service and I have a lot of respect for people who who sell Services because a lot of people ask me oh leard why don't you consult but hey consultancy you are basically selling a service but you have a team you have overheads how has that Journey been in this world even as you're seeing all these insights and you're building all that it doesn't it's it's a hard slug you know to sell this and make it something you know that pays the bills I met you you're a single man you're now married you have kids so how has that Journey been for you and for Nando yeah

23:47 I think the the journey has been fulfilling but difficult I'd say there's a level of of tolerance for pain that entrepreneurs and you know like entrepreneurs have they they have they have they have that I think it's it's baked in right they have a a weird threshold for the level of discomfort that they're willing to live with and I should say I I I'd like to think that we can categorize entrepreneurs into different buckets yes they are entrepreneurs of circumstance right so they in a way have had to get into business by virtue of you know circumstances that have pushed them in that could be wasn't able to necessarily get the job I want or get the role I want so I've gotten into self-employment um you have some who are what i' call you know people called tender preneurs they're really using uh relationships and proximity to say power to close

24:46 deals right and so it's not like they have a meaningful difference they just they they're they're you know gifted and skilled you know if you would which you you should rightly it has some measure of skill and effort to it to uh to achieve and unlock even though of course you know what we hear mostly about entrepreneurship is the illegalities and the the lack of competitiveness there and the you know and so on but it's it's it's part of the people you would if you to put a lineup of entrepreneurs they would all be the same I'd say there's some who are mission driven so there's a larger objective a larger change that's driving them which they are unlocking capital and resources to to to make happen and then you also have what I'd call entrepreneurship or what some people call entrepreneurship theater yes which is sometimes also part of the

25:30 spectacle which is where you know there's a lot of sometimes trainings or these these activities that are built to Spur entrepreneurship but it's not entrepreneurship as we might know it it's more of the Optics of it or the illusion of it so I say that because even even for me you know you have a lot of like you know you can question a lot along the journey CU I I would you know believe um that I'm more on the mission side that's what I try to sell my teammates on even our clients cuz we always say look we're serving at the pleasure of our client that's how it works in in services but you have a higher objective you have a higher goal a higher Mission and that's why I started by saying how much we play for the continent we took so much pride when we got to you know projects in 20 countries all sitting out of Nairobi projects in pin projects in Portuguese

26:15 projects in uh you know in the middle of nowhere you know at the border of like um you know I want to say it's like Tanzanian like either mosan and like places where nend has reached that we were like yeah that's it that's why we do this we do this because I mean we could be for argument sake we could be like hey we want to be the biggest in Kenya or I'm trying to have this and that personal um uh you know like uh individual objective met but for me the mission uh of what we're seeking to do by delivering grounded African insights and Trends where we can change perception change Behavior amongst people that just is such a fuel to not just my fire but I hope my teammates as well and it's worth sacrificing for it's worth doing a lot for on behalf of us and our clients do you think local Capital needs to do what nend is doing in the sense that the way you you you start with knowledge and insights yeah I

27:15 I feel that local capital is looking for the deals without starting with what do the likes you know um I've had conversation with capital holders who say we can't find deals yeah and one of the reasons I started this podcast is because I meet people who are deserving in my opinion of those funds you know they're not fluff they're not they're doing real work but they can't seem to tap into Capital do you think uh um our case maybe they should hire nend to do this you know backward integrate into where are the the the entrepreneurs so we kind of create a scenario where instead of trying to get the entrepreneurs to where we are we meet them where they are because they're already serving a real need if you have been in business for 10 years there's something you're doing right you know you're not running a charity you're running a real business yeah so do you think that the the holders of capital

28:16 would benefit from that I think so I mean even you know if we ask the question of in the last decade you know adjusted for inflation what have been you know sector by sector the biggest and most meaningful Returns on investment that they've been and been seen right even in real estate in you know land and land speculation Financial Services um oil and gas whatever that's a question that as researchers we would ask because then I'm looking for that and I'm saying what's the rhyme and reason here what at what point did some of these people actually get in right you have your private Equity your Venture Capital even just all of the successive funds raised amongst the Tech Community and you see a question like that I don't know the answer but I love the question and that's what you do as a researcher you fall in love with the problem not the solution because there's

29:05 so many options on the table for the solution but when you start there now you're saying where do I want to play in this and what type of returns am I looking for am I looking for steady and stable um you know predictable returns or am I looking for high risk high yield I want that bit of the hockey stick but I might have to back a dozen of which 11 of those don't necessarily return you know or the the Ed outcome and and that's what's fascinating about I think the work we do is we well you know yes we have sector expertise I can show you what have you done in agriculture and done in telcoms and Banking and internet but but for us as purists at nend part of what we're seeking to do is really fall in love with with the pursuit of a really great research question and then coming up with hypothesis and for a lot of what we do it's what we call strong

29:56 opinions loosely held you're trying to have some conviction cuz even the way that nend started most Professional Services businesses they start by hey Marx got his briefcase and Marx you know hitting the streets and opening his phone book to see who can I call for referrals and for business that works for a lot of people but Fernando and we started we had a press conference and we had 15 Trends and we said these are the Digital Trends that are going to set the table for Kenya and the continent in the coming weeks we're on the national news that day we on yahoo.com the next day when South African news the next day and guess what then people start emailing they say I saw your Trends I've read through them and you've you've scratched an itch we've been having four years you've you've started something that you don't even know what you've done with these 300 words or these 500 Words and then

30:42 what what are they saying hey can you send me a quote I need a fee note and so by delivering knowledge and insight and starting from there even for us we normally say Nando is our own client yeah so even with this podcast you know I have a a colleague and teammate behind the camera you know because we're trying to do more as us cuz sometimes the problem in Services is the Baker's children are starving yes you're so busy cooking baking serving ups for the people and your own you know the Cobblers children are shoeless Etc there's many analogies that talk about it and for us we've always tried to stay true to taking time to breathe and even if I look at some nendo's most impactful and meaningful projects they were side projects there were things we layed on to client projects or they were somewhere you know with misinformation or other challenges where we created

31:29 intellectual property by Africans you know about Africans for the rest of the world where we set a new bar and we do that because we're again we're fueled by more than just a fe note from a client like we have a an energy and an enthusiasm and effort for what we do that allows us to tackle even problems where're like okay we don't even have the funds to fully do that but we're going to take time as teammates come huddle and create some sort of solution and hope we can then find people to support it so what I like about this space that you're in um which I like but is also a challenge embedded therein is that the space is new for everyone you know um Facebook Twitter um Instagram uh Tik Tok they found us all across the globe at the same time you know you could argue that in terms of um the older media radio and TV we played catchup you know as a nation but fortun we had digital connectivity or we have

32:31 had good digital connectivity for the last 15 to 20 years as a nation and as a result we are getting this with which which brings me to uh the importance of what you're doing because you're then adding context there's no one who can come from the states and say they are more of a Tik Tok expert than you are because you got it at the same time you all got Tik Tok at the same time and you're using it the way you're using it you you can even argue that as being locally based you can better see nuances correct that others cannot see just like if I would take Nando to the states yeah you would miss some nuances there because you don't know exactly how how it works yeah but how do you stay ahead of this um one moment there was no Tik Tok then it's now here and then it explodes and it causes I think one of the most interesting things you told me uh when we last met is that Tik Tok caused

33:39 YouTube insta and and I think one other to change the way they are because of the impact of Tik Tok so how do you keep ahead of such a fast changing space to guide your clients in the right direction yeah I think for us the way that we keep up is we always observing one of the biggest things I tried to teach um and and Coach my own teammates and I'm always learning from them as well I should say is so much happens in front of us and we have learned perhaps it's the Kenyan 844 system perhaps it's just being overwhelmed in such an attention capture style ecosystem where our phones notifications are buzzing and there's so much happening so it's hard to pay attention and spot patterns I tell people even if we start with the family WhatsApp group what were the last couple forwards oh my gosh yeah my show show forwarded this and my you

34:37 know my relatives have been sharing this about about this conspiracy or that health drink or this treat yes let's start there what are you noticing about that is there any commonality okay yeah you know and so and so as this religious belief and so because all you you're trying to build a muscle in the mind that's not always there now for me I'll be honest I can't turn it off I've just been like this not out of the womb but like I think I think I've always been curious just about people and about their behavior and now when you have the data and I should always give a caveat it's public data that we access nothing private no DMS none of the other spooky stuff that happens us it's all the bits and bites of what we create and leave behind by visiting websites downloading apps and generally exchanging internet traffic on different platforms and

35:22 creating content now from there you're just trying to learn how to notice and when you notice things you're constantly coming up with what we call hypothesis could this be because of this that or the other and that's when now you then try to mirror that by what what I call Brain surfing the top Minds overseas so the amazing thing about the internet today is that it has the Oxford 2024 word of the year which is brain rot so there's a lot of content there that's that's somewhat uh equivalent of junk food online you watch it you're sort of Doom scrolling you don't really know why it didn't mean meaningfully leave you changed it didn't make you smarter it didn't edify and yet it was somewhat entertaining or stimulating some people argue that even um and we we part of the CSR stuff we do at nendo is is helping um uh talk to uh schools churches uh

36:14 religious institutions uh groups of parents about technology with teens Toddlers and the the family and this aspect of brain Rod is is quite a big issue because when I say brain surfing the best Minds in the world you can basically find what i' call the 1% uh and and not all of them are creating content but there's some content creators who are dedicated to explaining the practices habits and also publishing insights related to them we can pick Hospitality we can pick entrepreneurship we can pick many different things Services Etc now brain suring involves curating or selecting from your feed for some of these minds and consuming more of their content because that now allows you to have this constant flow of really high value meaningful content that you can then localize because you're noticing local Trends but sadly the majority of sometimes what we're seeing

37:04 here is you know kind of like when they when they say uh uh you know um you know calories with very little nutrition like sports drinks energy drinks CTC it's you're consuming it yes you're swiping up you're you're watching it but you're not it's not necessarily changing you or stimulating you mentally and yet this is this is increasingly what algorithms will serve you so it does take work to figure out what this top percentage of people are saying and thinking but they're there and you can find them in Southeast Asia it's not a sometimes I feel we we box ourselves in with the west but the lessons you can take away from Southeast Asia from India I am on some Indian newsletters to do with tech to do with insights I constantly get fascinated by what I learned from there they're one of the few countries in the world that banned Tik Tok successfully

37:48 because of a geopolitical issue between China and India and if you look at what it did for Instagram for YouTube It's fascinating because Tik Tok had turned housewives in some of some is to National celebrities right um and and you know Farmers similar to what they did in China to like National names who are building you know uh you know hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of value and businesses all off of taking their phone and going live and talking and we see again some similar parallels here uh maybe in in smaller spots but it just allows us again to just notice and observe when we're looking online we've never banned anything though and I don't I well let me not say we won't but uh anyway Never Say Never but yes we've not banned anything well let me correct you we have stifled or stopped access to telegram during exam time oh wow yes okay and it oh gosh I'm going to have to

38:46 pull up the statistic but it cost the Kenyan economy I want to say it's north of a million dollars just that and the rationale was oh there's a lot of cheating a lot of this cheating content is being exchanged on Telegram so we're going to shut down Telegram and typically that's the start of a move that some regimes also on the continent have done as a tester for what is like to stop the internet or stop social media why because I'll do it on this one platform and even some of the northern African countries do it around exam time specifically telegram but I say that because we've done that obviously there's questions or allegations around you know the the middle of June and June 24th 25th and and the challenges people had with accessing the internet um and so you have questions so we might not have had like an explicit ban CU sometimes there's regimes like in in West Africa who would put out letters

39:36 and say social media hereby is no longer accessible even South Sudan if I'm not mistaken the last few weeks they put out a letter saying that so it's the authorities have claimed and said that this is stopping and we are seizing access but so Kenya has flirted with that done it in small spots for particular platforms but no we've not had a shutdown like our uh a country to our North uh Northwest uh who have you know social media taxs internet shutdowns and various other things that would stop people from getting online now let's come into the the topic of the moment which is AI what are you seeing what are you hearing where are we going yeah I'd say that AI it's one of our big three trends that we're sharing with clients and helping them think through and work through I'd say AI in certain parts is a problem seeking a solution so mind you

40:31 chat GPT is amazing uh generative AI is exciting I think one of the biggest and most meaningful updates for our part of the world of the last few years since November 2022 when open AI launched chat GPT which started this particular phase of artificial intelligence as a as a be all and end all solution is the launch of a Chinese version called Deep seek that I would say was was pretty meaningful because it allows Africa not to depend purely on Western platforms where you're paying for Access or what are called tokens but instead you can build and integrate your own Solutions so you can do it offline offsite with zero access to the internet to upload your data and that's interesting it's interesting for banking it's interesting for telcoms it's interesting for the the it sector and downstream it can have an impact as as well but what's fascinating

41:29 to me and what we've noticed and been talking about with clients for a while is even something like CH GPT in Kenya in Uganda in Tanzania in certain African countries jbt is a top five most visited website in the country in Kenya it's number three this is mindbending to my team and I at nend because you look at how long it's typically taken some certain sites to be up there and you look at who it's above sitting at number three and it's just so interesting in fact at nend we mapped out at some stage using some um some data from Google where people search for Char and when you overlay a map of universities in Kenya you find that there's such an interesting correlation or potential correlation there that University students from your uh Chuka to down at the coast to your poly Technics to um you know your your various universities not just the big nation you know National ones that we might know of

42:33 um they are using chpt as well and of course let's let's be reminded that that Kenya is a global let's call it superpower in what um is this export this export of Labor that some people call contract cheating but there are other perhaps friendlier names but it's the concept that says that United States students students overseas will be matched up to a Kenyan through an online website who will sit their exams do their essays do their their thesis and so on and chpt has affected their income but it's it's still partly there but it's it's increasingly changing even that business model and many of them will be using chat GPT as well in fact strangely in the top 100 most visited websites there's even sites to humanize AI writing now because they're like okay so the AI writing is now say too good or or almost recognizable how do you dial it back and incorporate some mistakes

43:27 some challenges some quirks so that it passes across an anti-plagiarism Checker which is also using AI as as more human and we've noticed these things and so at least at that pedestrian everyday level many more people are adopting exploring and using it and then now Upstream platforms like deep seek allow us to uh to bring the thinking and reasoning of that model into an organization so that its knowledge um its data and its information can be shown differently can lead to different recommendations if you think about even offers um the there's there's a number of systems that that AI can can help and where where we start with nendo is we start by the customer working backwards so either the customer's pain points that AI might be able to solve or we start from uh the various offerings that are there and think of ways that AI can enhance or improve those and again

44:25 just like you said nendo's approach we start with data insights because otherwise what can happen is you can end up with a hammer ai ai is the solution let's add AI to that and of course some for some it'll be easy because that's how you can make hair when the sun is shining but for us we a little more Nuance to start with the end consumer and what's meaningful for them and that's where you find that AI is a bit of a problem in sech of a solution meaning people are using it they're generating images generating video generating sound generating text but can corporates begin to meaningfully generate value for themselves their shareholders or their customers and suppliers yes and no it's happening but sometimes big ships take long to turn so it might be another two or so years before we see a suite of AI tools but I can't wait to see an AI based fintech app I mean they already were using

45:13 machine learning to credit score you and myself what are they using our phone logs our uh you know the the geographical coordinates where you between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. because that's going to tell me a bit about you where you stay what's the rent you know the yield there is it where you told me you know you are do you move around a lot and then of course our mobile money so there was some previous forms of what we now call AI that were already happening yeah uh but the question now for me is who's building ground up for a world where you have the sort of peculiar Kenyan or peculiar African and our differences um and there's so many things there that I mean I remember uh an Insight we like to share is we once uh did some work with um uh mobile credit app experience and one of the things they were telling us at that time was how they wish they

46:06 could tell Kenyans not to uninstall the app because what would happen is that you download the app you uh you basically find out your score and then you borrow money and then people uninstall the app now here's the thing the app needs to be on your phone to consume data and watch your patterns and study you and be able to rate you appropriately especially if you're you're doing better over time with your repayments but people would uninstall it because they needed the space which is what we ended up telling them from our research and two they just had this view that it has no utility if it's sitting there and I'm making my payments directly to them and so there's some Behavior change there and trust me no AI will tell you that yeah right no in fact people are scratching their heads you're with people looking at charts and graphs and you're like that's not the answer is

46:52 not going to come from here it's going to come from us meeting our customers where they are and our audience where they are and interacting with them and I think that in multiple spaces across Society AI will have an impact it's having one now but I still think it's not yet we've not yet fully cracked it and some of the ways we'll end up cracking it are not ways that we'll see and interpret on face value they'll be more in the back end with efficiencies that we can get in coding and Technical um the technical side of building apps and so on customer support customer care I think we have spoted some really great opportunities there that we're working around and then maybe a handful of other places it's globally uh being adopted and seen but yeah we haven't yet fully cracked them for here and even when we do pecular Kenyans can end up breaking the system or challenging things in ways

47:40 you don't expect so very interesting but let let me let me challenge you with something maybe you can help us think through and understand sector by sector without naming your clients and and risking exposure on that front who do you think are executing this new landscape well and which sectors do you feel have a lot of catching up to do for AI no just in general if you look at nend like now we talked about banking agree ER and then that's the first question the the second question is I I see in the funding space a lot of Buzz around topic like I I I say oh there's money for fintech or when you're when you're trying to fundraise for something there's money for what I call the buzz topics of the day you know now it's F Tech it's and then it was climate before Trump came and and scuttled things you know but I I I sometimes question who's going to invest in the

48:55 boring but every day you know because there's the buzard but the bzw word has to feed something and that buzard that that that's something that needs to be fed is normally very mundane you know like for example and maybe it's my bias towards my industry our big disruption in Hospitality has been Airbnb you know which came and democratized that but it still didn't change the fundamentals of hospitality which is someone needs somewhere to sleep when they away from their home or in a restaurant someone needs to go out either functionally for a meal or as a form of entertainment so that would't change you don't really see that yet the funding doesn't really talk to that so maybe you can speak to those two two things yeah I I'd say for the first question the that's that's hard to say I mean I think I think there's a mindset that to me is more

49:58 I mean I I'll give an example I joined my first board yes about four years ago and that has been a fascinating Journey for me because I I ended up stumbling a bit because I ended up sometimes doing too much it's like no no no you're on the you don't have to be asking guy you're flying above don't even ask us just read your board papers come in and and you know facilitate the Strategic conversations bring some of that but you have this governance role cuz I think about as sort of straty right from from the vision board and governance level and what I've seen there I'd say are businesses in their ambition in their commitment in their Direction and I think American companies are very fascinating if you look at how they report earnings to Wall Street and and and and begin to set the agenda you don't always hear you know from the boards but you know that they have a

50:50 hand in some of that as part of their stewardship then you have leadership right just setting planting a flag somewhere right I think Kenya has a unique opportunity to become a bit of a regional player even geopolitically in this AI sector in this Tech sector I feel that's a that's an open opportunity but just like you said if we looking at whether it's AI or this insights aspect I mean we were talking to a client in you know what you would call the bottom of the pyramid right targeting um everyday Kenyans earning below a certain amount and I mean the the the numbers they were talking about there were like staggering right that is not a business that's got any microphones you know there might be in some gum boots you might hardly even really need much more than like a kabami a very basic phone and yet for food for Logistics like you're saying some of these unsexy business areas there's a in

51:49 in principle almost a bit of a fortune almost to be made there and things when I hear things like that they really challenge me sometimes because I think I'm bangging my head against computer I'm typing until my my hands are sore in meetings and calls all day right in this business of knowledge and ideas and yeah for for for me I think that that there is a leadership opportunity to set a vision and I think Challenger brands are better placed than established incumbents yes and Market leaders to do that to yeah to to to compete on the basis of the experience they provide and then to keep changing and improving that experience based on the feedback and data just closing that Loop right this aspect of are we sitting in our air conditioned room and really sort of keeping the business as usual and and squeezing as much juice out of that as we can or do we have an idea and

52:45 are ready to make enough mistakes in service of of that to disrupt ourselves I don't think I can expect that of a market leader but in Banking and Financial Services what what could that you know that X Factor B for me I think and we've mapped this out at nend there's some workflows we still look at and we wonder even with AI like you know why why does why does this work in this way and some you'd say is you know it's security or uh some are that's just the way we've done it and we're like is there no one who can ask can it be done differently and so I think you know if if um yeah if you look at ussd menus like for us I can't wait to see who takes you know AI for example or generative AI um and machine learning and so on and tries to to break that cycle of 10 sort of flows press one press two press three Etc you look at even the process of paying a bill right

53:43 I use a a budgeting app which remembers my location when I pay something somewhere and when I when I say that I I mean even at the ground floor of the coffee shop here it'll remind me and it'll even remind me what I paid on my bill the last time I'm like why can't P do that this app has this app uses no AI this app has been the same it's called wab right it's been the same for easily five plus years so it's not it's not something like that but you look at how many Taps I have to do on my screen to clear my bill or to send you and I just keep asking myself who is going to break that and say who said we have to accept this right even a few years ago one of our Trends was around a bit of a Revolt or challenges with fees just the fees we pay for certain transactions and you you look again on Tik Tok and places like that we found certain communities that

54:27 are coming together to change some of the ways you accumulate fees again they're not changing the system they're just trying to find workarounds so I'd say that for me it's it's whoever can close the loop between my business as usual my gravy train what's got me here and got me successful in the coming years and say I'm willing to bet say 3% of my annual budget or 1% and if I end up losing and tanking a bit of that I don't mind but I'm ready for the learnings that will come with that it closer to my customer and I get a better feedback loop and that would be exting to see I think what I like most about your world is that the customer is Central yeah that's right and and you don't see that um I have my own quals about customer service standards because I I feel that a lot of customer service sticking a box and the genuine I want to

55:21 get to know what you're feeling is not so it's really good to hear something that that starts with the customer the center you know what's interesting about that briefly normally we say um if you're my client and I'm your thinking knowledge partner you know you could be research for your creative work or you know even training your team you're not my customer your customer is my customer and and and on in service of that I'm ready to actually disagree with you in fact sometimes we're like no we actually disagree with you on that they're like what do you mean you're disagreeing right because I'm the client I'm telling you and we say as a guy called custom exactly there's there's a there's a a guy called Mark Ritson he's a marketing professor and I always start with this quote and I deliberately want to upset my clients a bit when I show it to them it says the

56:06 day you started being paid by the organization that makes you my client you seize to be a good advocate for that person because you get personal you get defensive know you get jaded you're protecting your corner and that's why you need me because I if I'm doing my job correctly right n is not for everyone but I will challenge you and I won't just challenge you because it's my gut and my opinion even though some sometimes it will be but I'll challenge you because of hypothesis I have about them and they are they are the people who keep you in business let's have a spirited debate on that because not too many people do you know what CU many agencies and and obviously we try not to be this agency but sometimes you become an what they call an order taker you give me orders and I give you what you want whereas we should be pursuing them and what gives longterm value sales and profit or makes

56:52 a meaningful difference to them great Mark as as we draw to the end maybe you can share with us some interesting Trends because one of my take homes whenever I sit down with you of our coffee of our meal is you always leave me thinking about your interesting so what are your trends of the moment what are you seeing at the moment and where do you think we're going with what you're seeing particularly in the context of the country and the continent yeah I say that nendo's three trends for 2025 that we presented to clients in a in a webinar and have been you know sharing around besides the work we'll doing that's more specific to like customer experience or product marketing or innovation and so on is what we call zero click content right which is a phrase that came from um uh software company in the US uh and then I I'll describe them and I'll go a little

57:49 deeper but zero click content is one Tik Tok is the other and then the third one is AI in the workplace in products and in everyday life so zero click content is basically a way of rethinking the last 10 years of how social media and online platforms have worked so the way that it's been is you have built your website you have built your platforms and in the beginning you started growing an audience on Facebook on X formerly known as Twitter on Instagram etc etc even on Google you worked to rank this website now the biggest change we've seen in the last year and a half which we now warning clients about and challenging them to rethink is this world where you're expecting that you can share links to your platform on some or your website on someone else's so you'll get punished for that now yeah on Twitter if you do a thread right that's playing in the right way why you're keeping somebody in the

58:52 platform for longer um and that's what x wants if you go on Facebook now and provided you this is not an ad if you're putting links there the odds of people clicking those links and coming outside and they're especially low for Kenya and I say this because we've been entrusted with reasonable digital media buying budgets for across the continent like multiple countries Nigeria last year Ghana you know Kenya right now and other countries too and something that still fascinates me a bit about Kenya is how sometimes people will be hesitant to click a link in some cases and it's because again I'm in this world Garden where I'm not paying with my megabytes you have something I like but you ask me to go somewhere else right so zero click content says we need to change how we think because if we continue with the old ways we'll be punished so you know

59:40 in a way so disincentivized even Google right now if you and I Google something there's something called the AI overview they give you a summary at the top and so guess what they're doing they're disrupting themselves because they Char if you scroll a little lower they charge for that click that's how their share price stays as big as it is and now they're serving you so you don't click to go anywhere even on Kenyan topics so people who spent the last decade becoming the number one two3 search result for insurance for different things now if I'm not in that AI overview I I'm not thinking ahead in that way the world is changing and has changed a lot so that's one Tik Tok I just say is basically just uh the grip it has on Kenya I said you know over 1.3 you know million videos posted a day it is almost three times theze of Instagram here so it came and passed another

1:00:29 platform and like you said uh We've noticed I mean I'll give an example so we were tracking in our Trends Tik Tok before they were Tik Tok when they were an app called musically so when Tik Tok actually hired Africans and they finally came to Kenya I mean we just got a knock at the office like you guys are the guys who've been talking about us for like a while you know let's meet let's talk um and so we met their team and have been cordial with them uh since then we've trained creators and and our thing is to notice what's happening inside there because more and more of people's time is going there and one of the reasons for that especially with one of our predictions around Rural and per Urban users is there's a data bundle package that costs 10 Shillings for one gigabyte of Tik to only data and that completely just breaks your brain with this idea

1:01:17 that like I'm going to pay with my megabytes now it's honestly even I've tried it's it's hard to finish that GB in an in an hour that's how long it takes but that's opening it up for people who spend one hour uploading interacting with content going live so you look at how it's just rewiring how we use platforms and the stuff on Tik Tok particularly in vernacular right there's a kikuyu talk a Kaa talk a kenin talk a luya talk mikenda talk you name it Somali talk and each one of them you now break it down further you've got comedy you've got humor you've got politics you've got entertainment you've got Sports you've got you know sort of news culture and it's happening in vernacular right um and so I mean again you know we're noticing so many things within that and there's opportunities within this even Creator economy that's there because there's a genz poll that came

1:02:05 out from our good friends at odipo Dev last year in April and one of the things that they and African sense had covered was of the top three career choices for Kenyans aged 18 to 29 that's your genz uh sort of of age what you found was that number one was being self-employed right or business second tight second with with doctor right historically one of the number one career choices was Tik toer so so you have people saying I want to be a Tik tocker or influencer and so that's why you need to monitor it so closely and then for AI it's a bit of what we said which is just yeah the ways that it's integrating and the opportunities that are there wow Mark what a conversation you know when I talk to you I I I just learned so much and you leave me wanting more but I think um one thank you for coming on to the podcast um you now you capture once again uh the kind of guest that we want

1:03:04 to have and so um I'll just give you a chance to tell the the viewers where they can find nend and so that those that should be talking to you can start talking to you and uh thank you very much for coming on the African do podcast yeah happy happy to be here uh so talking to the viewers at home and the listeners to the P I'd say you can keep up with nend and our insights through our website so that's nend NE n d O.co dok and so there you'll find our blog where we take a lot of pride in giving away most of our best knowledge for free so please use that as a resource we have free reports where we put starts we put Trends we put insights that can help your Enterprise your company your nonprofit your small business we hope uh but they are more observational it's things for you to notice where you can get our grounded African insights and Trends and then really for us reach out if there's a way

1:04:01 that we can support from being a thinking and knowledge partner to training and workshops which we're doing more of in 2025 to research online and offline or our digital audit to even marketing and creative work that's meaningfully different uh we're always happy to talk and we've even been doing quite a lot more work in the in the crisis Comm space and helping with protecting reputations and understanding the networks of people who are mobilized against corporates or different um narratives and so we've been investigating and exploring that so we're perpetually curious and yeah that's one of the best ways to keep up with us is the website and uh some intermittent newsletter with updates coming soon excellent ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for joining us in episode 14 of the African do podcast Our Guest Mark Kaa Thank you very much n.c. ke check them out thank

1:04:59 you very much [Music]