re-confirm that this is what I call
‘Kenya’s Kiosk mentality’ in my
marketing perspective!
I speak under corrections but I
suspect most executives handling
County destination marketing
dockets today, grew up in such an
environment and with the advent
of Counties, they didn’t hesitate to
formulate and execute what in their
subconscious minds were the most
successful marketing success stories
in their childhood days.
Unraveling the plot
Why do I say so? The promulgation
of the new constitution provided
a unique opportunity to package,
position and market each of the
forty seven counties in 47 different
ways. From a simplistic viewpoint,
destination marketers, Or Ministers
in charge of County Marketing
as the case may be, had a unique
opportunity to strengthen National
value proposition in tourism with
each formulating and executing a
distinctly unique value proposition.
This could have rivaled South Africa’s
approach for instance where each
of the South Africa Provinces is
uniquely positioned (SA provinces
are equivalent of Kenyan County).
Nevertheless, going by the efforts
(or is it lack of ) expended initiatives
to differentiate Kenya’s County
value proposition so far, I would
be tempted to believe it is late but
not too late for Counties to change
their approach to County marketing
aimed at exploiting the uniqueness of
each county – not a ‘me too approach’
as currently witnessed.
The same would then provide
synergy to the National Marketing
efforts as championed by Kenya
Tourist Board, KTB for leisure
tourism and KICC for MICE if am
not mistaken.
At the moment every county seems
to be in a rush to host an investment
conference (Not bad at all) and invite
88 MAL 12/16 ISSUE
‘‘The promulgation of the new constitution
provided a unique opportunity to package,
position and market each of the 47 counties
in 47 different ways. From a simplistic
viewpoint, destination marketers, Or
Ministers in charge of County Marketing, had
a unique opportunity to strengthen National
value proposition in tourism with each
formulating and executing a distinctly unique
value proposition.’’
the same institutions to invest in
nearly similar sectors! One wonders
why counties haven’t seriously
thought of creating ‘blocks of
Counties’ to pursue certain common
regional agenda for instance.
From a simplistic view point, I
guess the packaging ought to have
been on the basis of some honest
SWOT analysis to provide strategic
direction for each county. This
in my opinion would have given
a good foundation on which to
formulate an authentic and logically
differentiated storyline.
Curiously quite a number of
Counties seems to be having an
identical approach to County
destination marketing. Each county
seems to be targeting same form
of tourism; most counties seems to
be planning to build a Conference
Center going by the recent media
reports and MoUs signing sprees.
At that rate, Kenya might end up
with 47 conference centres whereas
not even South Africa which is the
current leading MICE destination
in Africa, has half of that number
of ICCs.
Having said that, all is actually not lost
as some counties seem to have gotten
some things right to exploit what
mother nature endowed them with.
Turkana County for instance scored
big with their annual “Tobong’ Lore
Cultural Event 2012”. I remember
travelling to Turkana for this event
made me appreciate how much
Counties could enrich themselves
if they worked on their value
proposition around their unique
beauty.
Without exaggeration, if an average
well-travelled Kenyan were blind
folded and ‘dropped’ in the shores of
Lake Turkana, I won’t blame him/
her believing that s/he has been
‘dropped’ in some Portugal or some
Mediterranean destination.
That part of Turkana is simply
amazing! The big question is who
knows about it? Who is to blame
that you don’t know about it?
Interestingly, many Kenyans still fly
all the way to Dubai to drive Jeeps
on sand yet Turkana offers similar
if not better terrain with glittering
silica and better air due to humidity.
I attribute this to lack of effective
County Marketing.
Still on differentiation, Mombasa and
Coastal Counties should and must
continue packaging their offering
around what it is known for as they
seek to market new experience to
augment this.
Kisumu county should not even think
along the same lines as Mombasa
but the concentration of senior
medical practitioners should probably