Lenny Ng’ang’a, CEO for East Africa at Saracen OMD, talks about competitive advantages. Starting operations in 2003, Saracen OMD has grown to become one of the biggest media agencies in East Africa today.

"Our competitive advantage is being veterans of the industry. I have been in this industry for 24 years. My other partners have been active about the same length of time. We have worked across East and West Africa so we have a deep knowledge of consumers in this particular part of the market. We understand the consumers’ point of view and how to motivate consumers and how to reach consumers for our clients’ benefit. That is one of the key advantages we have. The second one would be, true to the ethos of the Omnicom Media Group and OMD, that we focus on our clients. Now, we are really driving towards return on investment and performance marketing. It is making sure that with everything we do with our clients we start tracking the return investment, whether it is in terms of hard measures or soft measures like empathy and emotion towards the brand or the product or even changing habits in terms of social marketing programs. We are really focused on delivering for our clients the outcomes of any marketing investment. We look now beyond just advertising. We look at holistic solutions to help our clients achieve their goals. For example, we had one client who was selling satellite internet connectivity, which is not affordable for most companies and only used by companies who are in very remote places where there is no infrastructure. They came to us and they wanted to run a campaign above the line on traditional media. I told them no. Despite the fact that we were not going to earn a commission, we told them that it just did not make sense. We told them it was better to do a face to face selling or a series of breakfasts. We profiled for them that there were only about 32 companies that could afford their service. If they did a breakfast with each company, they could meet everyone and it would be the best way to go about their marketing. We do not just look at the traditional options, we look at total solutions for our clients", says Lenny Ng’ang’a.

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