Seasons

 

Starting a business for the vulnerable may not deliver self-reliance

(As published in the Observer: https://observer.ug/viewpoint/71351-starting-a-business-for-the-vulnerable-may-not-deliver-self-reliance)

A friend recently told me his organisation is phasing out the giving of food to the vulnerable mothers living with HIV that they currently support because they realised handouts are not a sustainable intervention. 

The organisation has now embarked on training the mothers how to make petroleum jelly and soap so that when the handouts stop coming, the mothers can start selling the petroleum jelly and soap to earn an income to meet their needs.

This path of skilling beneficiaries and offering them capital to start their own businesses is one trod by a number of NGOs in Uganda because many see it as a more sustainable way to economically empower the vulnerable. But can this intervention deliver economic self-reliance for the vulnerable?

A number of studies of businesses in Uganda and world over report that most businesses never make it to their second birthday with one study placing the percentage of businesses that die within the first 18 months at 80%.

Obviously, without the capital to start and a product to sell, those failed businesses would never have appeared among the statistics of started businesses because those two are a must-have before any business can start.

The reasons, therefore, for the death of 80% of the businesses are not lack of capital or lack of a product to sell but rather the lack of other things needed to make a business work.

Good self-management skills, having a good team, keeping a positive attitude in all circumstances, marketing skills, negotiation skills, good time management, bookkeeping knowledge, resilience and good instincts are some of the other critical things and skills a business owner must possess to set up and run a profitable business.

In addition to having all the above skills and traits, the chances of a business becoming successful are much higher if the business is started out of the entrepreneur's self-initiative because building and running a business is an uphill task that relies heavily on the entrepreneur's self-confidence.

Unfortunately, even this is something most business owners created from NGOs' skilling initiatives will lack because starting a business (as a substitute to receiving handouts) is often the only available option that every beneficiary must embrace, willy-nilly.

All the realities mentioned above that characterize businesses born out of skilling initiatives by NGOs leave the businesses highly susceptible to premature death.

This means, using my friend's organisation as an example, that within 18 months from the time, they stop giving those vulnerable HIV positive mothers food handouts, 80% of them and their families will be in a worse state than they are now—with no food handouts and no business (a source of income).

Therefore, although hand-to-mouth handouts are indeed not sustainable, it is imperative that NGOs carefully examine their proposed alternative interventions to food handouts to ensure that those alternatives can deliver the economic empowerment they desire to achieve.

How social media is making you polygamous (Part Three)

Online, many of us today interact with tens and hundreds of people a day but without really relating with any of them. Our communications are limited to things that bring no discomfort such as jokes, inspirational messages, Bible verses with good promises, etc. (most of which are often forwarded). Anyone who sends us or posts messages that condemn or rebuke or oppose anything we do or believe in, that one we block, mute, unfollow or unfriend because we do not want any “negative energy”. We do not want to invest in understanding anyone but are always fiercely demanding to be understood.

Meanwhile, offline, we hardly focus on the people we are with to give them the attention they deserve because our minds are always wherever our phones are—wondering what our virtual friends have posted online. We keep our phones on as if there is a life support app installed on them. We do not miss any notification about a new message or an update from any of our online friends.

Essentially, we have relegated our physical interactions with others to a mere by the way to the point that any person—parents, siblings, children, friends, etc.—stands higher chances of getting our attention if they communicate to us via our social media channels even if we are only an arm’s distance away from them.

Without any meaningful interactions online and not caring much for real-life interactions, we today find ourselves in the same place as the polygamous man—having many relationships but all shallow.

This lack of depth to our relationships has greatly limited our individual growth and ability to reach our goals and dreams in life because we do not have the people (the most important ingredient for success) we need in our lives to enable us proper. The many “friends” that we have occupy a place so shallow in our lives we would rather die than tell them we have no food to eat. Meanwhile, we are also largely insignificant in people’s lives because we are only there with them when all is well.

We need to realise and appreciate what is at stake for us and be deliberate about meaningfully investing in our relationships with other people. Whatever dreams you have, whatever plans you have, you will, at the very least, need people to bring them to life because no man is an island.

Relating meaningfully with family, friends, or any other people—relating beyond convince—will without a doubt come with its load of unpleasant moments but we need to recognise the bonding opportunities those moments present us with and not dash to social media so they can pass.

Remember, only a friend in need is a friend indeed.

How social media is making you polygamous (Part Two)

In a polygamous relationship, convenience for the man, is elevated above commitment. If a man has two partners and there is something about his relationship with one of his partners that he does not like, he has the option of going to his other partner for a better experience. And the more partners he has, the higher his chances of never having to deal with anything he does not like about any of his partners. This is a very attractive type of relationship for the polygamous man because it feeds his carnal selfishness and greed.

Polygamy, however, in the long-term is very unfulfilling for both the husband and his partners. Commitment to a relationship only when it is convenient for you suffocates growth of that relationship and the parties in it. Whether is it business, education, faith, relationships, etc., undivided and unwavering commitment is required for growth to be realised.

But since polygamous relationships are designed to shield the polygamous man against having to deal with most/any of his partner’s unpleasant or low moments, the bonds formed in there are often shallow as the man and his partners never really get to know and bond with each other.

Just reflect upon your life and think about the people you hold dearest. How did those people become so dear to you and when did that happen? Is there any person you hold dear in your life on account of always being with you during your happy and good times?

It is during the low moments, the trying moments, in the midst of dealing with life’s challenges that we all want someone in our life. And whoever stands with us during those moments is the one we bond with most allowing them a very special place in our life. For the partner of a polygamous man, this special bond with her man is never realized because whenever a bonding opportunity avails itself disguised as challenges, the man is somewhere else in pursuit of comfort.

As a result, the polygamous man also never gets to experience affection from an intimate partner offering it from the deepest depths of her heart because none of his partners has allowed him that very special place in her heart because it is reserved only for the one who will be there for her through the thick and thins of life.

The hollowness and lack of depth in connection between a man and his partners in a polygamous relationship is something many of us today are also experiencing in our relationships with family and friends.

In many ways, thanks to social media, we behave like the polygamous man—always avoiding any moment in our relationships that requires our investment of time, openness, patience, physical presence, finances, etc. We too have elevated convenience over commitment. 

How social media is making you polygamous (Part One)

If monogamy and polygamy were products on sale, polygamy’s competitive advantage over monogamy would be the fact that it allows the one who practices it to enjoy the benefits of being in an intimate relationship without paying the full price of committing being in one.

It is easy to love someone, anyone, from a distance. But I can bet: everyone who has made the decision to get to know a person beyond their public image (which usually means starting to live with a person under one roof) has questioned if they really love their partner at all.

At the seabed of all human souls is a strong desire to be known and loved (for that is what true love is). Sadly, naturally, the more we know about a person, the lesser our willingness to continue loving them. 

When in love, we always convince ourselves that the person we are in love with is all good. This bubble, however, is soon burst when our lover's true nature is laid bare before us.

By default, we are all selfish. By default, we are all greedy. By default, we are all proud (stubborn to yield to any teaching, correction or discipline). These traits, deeply embedded within each human soul, are hard to detect in a non-intimate relationship because there, meddling in each other’s life is minimal.

On the other hand, choosing to have an intimate relationship is allowing another person to meddle in your life above the minimal with the often-accompanying assumption that your partner too has allowed you equal access in their life. It is this unrestricted access that allows a person in an intimate relationship to see their partner for who they truly are.

Unfortunately, because we all always make what is good about us public knowledge, most of what is often left to be discovered about a person is what is undesirable about them i.e. their selfishness, greed, pride, weaknesses, illnesses, etc.

An intimate relationship, therefore, can be defined as a journey one undertakes to get to know another person beyond what they like about them and committing to love them regardless of what they will find out about them. This is why in the Church of Jesus Christ, where marriage is monogamous, the vows for holy matrimony provide no way out of it until death. Marriage, as intending couples are always reminded before exchanging vows, is a decision one must take only after serious thought because loving a person whose shortcomings you have known is humanly very difficult.

To circumvent this difficulty, some have opted for polygamy where they get extra wives and/or mistresses—officially or otherwise.

Understanding COVID-19 teenage pregnancies in Uganda

For over 8 months now, almost every week, a headline announcing teenage pregnancies recorded in thousands in a district in Uganda has appeared in the press. These teenage pregnancies have been blamed on the closure of schools that was ordered by Government of Uganda as one of the measures to control the spread of COVID-19. But is it COVID-19 we should be blaming?

If a child fears to show up at school pregnant more than she fears showing up at home pregnant, what does that say about her parent(s) and the values of the family she comes from?

In Uganda today it appears majority of us have lost the ability to derive pleasure from any anything that is not sexual. The jokes cracked on radio stations are sexual; the songs topping the charts are filled with sexual lyrics; the trending music videos have very sexually suggestive dances; the trending clothes are those that leave little to imagine; etc.

This month, a judge of the constitutional court, justice Frederick Egonda-Ntende, asked, "What harm would result to society if publication, exhibition or other representation of images of sexual parts of the human body or sexual activities primarily for sexual excitement, is not prohibited?" The constitutional court went ahead and decriminalized the publication orexhibition of pornography in Uganda.

Surely, with all this sexual content that fills our mass media that we are promoting (even in our homes) and decriminalising, how can our children not be sexually active?

Values are caught, not taught. And whatever values we as a nation embrace and promote especially at family level, those, our children will pick up.

Keep calm

Feeling lost? Not sure you know what you want or need to do next?

Well... don't be upset about it. 

Remember, your life was not your idea so there is no way you can have it all figured out. 🙅🏾‍♂️

Seek your Creator and let Him tell you what you need to do next.

Keep calm.

How keep a vibrant online presence for your organization during COVID-19 lockdown

The biggest hurdle most organisations face to achieving a vibrant online presence is lack of enough quality engaging content to share across their digital platforms. Although many have the statistics to show the impact that their work is having, having a consistent and sustainable flow of success stories from where the implementation action happens to their communications teams/officers is a big challenge.

A visit to different digital platforms for many organizations shows that many suffer from a Content Deficiency Syndrome (CDS). Notable among the signs for CDS are large time gaps between updates shared and repeated use of particular content.

If your organisation has staff (some in 10s and 100s) working every day to achieve your organisation’s set objectives, why are stories about the impact that your work is having so hard to come by? If you seek to solve such a challenge, let me prescribe three practical things you can do to cure your organisation of the CDS and achieve a sustainable vibrant presence across all your digital/communications platforms.

1. Organisation's leadership must value and invest in communications

John C. Maxwell said that “everything rises and falls with leadership.” And this makes sense because every organisation’s priorities are set by its leadership. Areas of great interest to the leadership in any organisation always thrive while the others just get by. Therefore, as of first importance, to achieve effective communications, the leadership of your organisation needs to appreciate the vital and central role that communications plays.

I know that sometimes leaders are not able to invest as much in communications because their hands are tied by limited funds or specific contract clauses. However, leaders of organisations must, right from the project/programme inception stage, prioritise communications and lobby to have it as a core department in the organization with sufficient funding.

There is very little that any organisation can achieve without internal and external communications. For example, if you are a for-profit organization, you need to communicate to your target market about your products and why people should buy them. Communication. If you are a not-for-profit organisation, you need to communicate to your funders and tell them why they should invest in your work as you also communicate to your target community why they need to embrace what you are offering as solutions to their problem(s). Communication.

Meanwhile, for profit or not, all organisations have staff that need to be reminded continuously of the organisation’s mission and objectives while also being updated on what is happening in the organization through staff bulletins, noticeboard memos, newsletters,

An organsiation that values, prioritises, and invests in having effective communications will enjoy the following benefits:

        i. Great team work because through communications, all stakeholders—staff, partners, donors, target community members, etc.—will be mobilised and galvanised to each make their contribution to the shared mission as they all get updates on what needs to be done, who needs to do what, what has been done and achieved thus far, while those worthy of appreciation are appreciated and recognised for their work.

       ii. Sustained work and achievements beyond any project’s time frame and funding because the people will have an appreciation of the importance of the work that was done and will want to consolidate any achievements realised during the project’s implementation time frame.

Communications is not an add-on function. It is a role critical for the efficient operation of any organisation and its survival.

A mother who uses a donated mosquito net for sieving juice instead of using it to shield her children from mosquito bites is a mother who never quite appreciated the need for that mosquito in the first place. But through communications, that mother can be helped to appreciate the grave cost that malaria carries for her and her children and why a mosquito net needs to be used for its intended purpose only. And if effectively done, the mosquito net will indeed serve its purpose for a long time.

The critical role that communications plays makes it worthy of classification as a senior management role, and those who treat it as such will reap the rewards.

2. Profile impact, not activities or expenditure

If it is not leadership, the other reason why organisations struggle to find content for their digital platforms is that their communications are often focused on activities done and/or proof of expenditure and not impact achieved.

Updates on a workshop held (in a posh hotel), a project launched, donation of equipment, a graduation ceremony for trainees, a building commissioned, etc. are what fill the timelines of most organisations’ social media platforms and websites.

Although it is impossible to achieve impact without activities and expenditure (and hence the need to once in a while highlight the duo), these are often on-offs with very limited capacity to reveal the impact achieved through the activities carried out and money spent.

To highlight impact, content needs to move from profiling what has been done to what experiences the activity/expenditure has delivered to the different stakeholders. To achieve this, gathering stories of impact through interviews should be the focus and not covering events. This will generate a lot more content for use in your communications in addition to achieving for your organisation a deeper connection with your online audiences because people relate and connect more to stories/experiences as opposed to updates about facts.

If, for example, you have an event to commission a classroom block that your organisation has constructed for a given community, you will find that the presence of that classroom block carries varying significance depending on who you talk to. The students, the teachers, the head teacher, the parents, the community leaders, the local council officials, the Ministry of Education officials, your organisation’s staff, the builders who constructed it, etc. will each have a different story to share about what that building means to them hence giving you an abundance of stories (content) from just one event. And if you establish a good relationship with the community members, they will always be happy to tell you story after story of how that classroom block has benefited them and you can continue to milk that one project for stories for years to come as users of the classroom block change or evolve.

If your organization focuses on highlighting impact and not activities or expenditure, you will never run out of content for your digital platforms.

Sharing stories of how lives are being changed because of your work will also open more doors for partnerships and funding for your organisation because people will see the good work you are doing and great impact it is achieving.

3. Use an Impact Report Form*

                    i.  An Impact Report Form will achieve three things for your organisation:

                   ii. All staff will be creating communications content.

                 iii.  You will never lack what to share on your digital platforms because you will always have leads to where to get the next impact/success story from.

Staff will be made more aware of the impact their work is having and hence find their work more fulfilling.

An Impact Report Form (IRF) is only a summary of what impact any intervention has had on an individual. (It is important that you keep the focus on an individual because personal experiences provide more captivating stories.)

The IRF captures, briefly, what situation necessitated your organisation’s intervention, what intervention your organization implemented and what has changed in the life of the impacted person as a result of the intervention.

Of course, not all IRFs will produce success stories that will be featured on your digital platforms but they will provide your communications team with a pool of leads to great success stories and after vetting the IRFs, the communications team can always select a story to profile in detail using photography, videography and/or interviews.

A story is told of a sweeper at a NASA space center who was asked what their work at the center was and they responded, “I am sending a man to the moon.” Filling out IRFs will help all your staff (including you) know that as an organization you are all about achieving the desired end goal and staff will be able to see how their work is contributing to that as they report about the impact their work is having on your target community.

 A director who seldom leaves the head office but attends countless meetings to make decisions about the organsiation’s operations in the field should be able to report on how those meetings are facilitating the different interventions and what impact those interventions are achieving.

The same goes for support staff like drivers, cooks, etc. and full time office staff like human resource managers, accountants, etc.; all these should be able to connect their effort to the impact that the organisation is achieving because that impact is what your organization needs to be reporting about with everything else as a means to that end.

If your organisation's mission is to keep children safe and an accountant processes money for the purchase of airtime for staff and a member of staff makes an official phone call that saves a child from being abused, that accountant should be able to report about that because it is because they processed the airtime that the field staff was able to make that phone call that saved the child.

Sometimes, staff struggle achieving harmonious teamwork within organisations because some staff do not see how their work directly affects the organisation’s daily (and overall) ability to achieve or fail to achieve its desired impact. The IRF helps all staff weigh the impact of their toil on the organisation’s ability to achieve impact.

IRFs will also help you as an organization easily spot which staff deserve to be recognized as they each report on what contribution they made to any achieved impact.

Maybe more tasks or paperwork is the last thing you want to create for your staff, but the IRF (which can be in A5 size) is a form you and your staff should be excited about. For any organisation out to achieve impact, tracking how much impact you are achieving should be your obsession because stories of impact are what you need to be sharing with the world to show value for your effort and any funding received.

 A mandatory weekly filling in of the IRF by all staff should be doable for any organization.

*You are free to customize it to suit your organisation’s needs

A COVID Love Letter

Dearest,

The pandemic of your love has placed me under total lockdown.

Let me in as an essential worker so I can travel to every corner of your heart.

Kiss me and sanitize me from all my pain.

Socially distance from all the others and hold tightly onto me like a face mask.

Please... be careful with my heart, it is one of my soft parts.

Vaccinate me with daily doses of your touch and hugs and cure my loneliness.

Ask mother and father to lift this curfew over our love, I promise to observe all their SOPs. 

Yours,

Love

Sex, Family, Church and Community… The Better Way

 SEX: Like all of us, our adolescents and young adults will battle fierce waves of sexual desires within their bodies. Giving them condoms and contraceptives so they can have “safe sex” is more detrimental than beneficial to their growth and future. We should instead teach them the better free-of-charge way of managing and dealing with sexual desires and all desires at that i.e. having self-control while ridding our media of all the sexual innuendo that has filled it today.

FAMILY: If husbands are not fulfilling their leadership duties in their families, wives, the church and wider community should sternly rebuke the husbands while encouraging them to man up to their God-given responsibilities in the family. We should stop investing in turning women into better men otherwise we’ll end up with the unattended famine roles and fumblers at the masculine roles.

CHURCH: If the Church (the followers of Jesus Christ) are not giving enough to support the work of the churches, the church leaders should labour to teach Christians about giving towards the work of the Church as one of their cardinal duties as followers of Jesus Christ. The church was not established for income generation. The Church is incapable of pursuing both God and money.

COMMUNITY: If our neighbourhoods are insecure, we should find ways to restore and promote the spirit of community and oneness wherever we stay so that each one looks out for the safety of the other. Building high walled perimeter walls and putting our trust in weapons will only, in the long term, lead to more insecurity.

Let’s choose the better way of living.

10 Tips for Effective Digital Marketing

With more people now aware and appreciative of the benefits of digital marketing (mainly due to the new normal created by COVID-19), many are asking themselves: How can I market my products/services online effectively? If you are one of those asking this question, I have 10 tips to help you achieve effective digital marketing.

But before I can share the tips, I have a quick and simple assignment for you.

Assignment 

Imagine you have to create an advert for a car on sale for each of the target market groups below. List three features about that car that you would highlight in your advert for each advert.

1. Middle income salary earners
2. Couples with children
3. Rich celebrities

Now, the 10 tips for effective digital marketing.

Tip 1: Point out only the key/strong facts about your product (not everything) 

When creating an advert, there is a temptation to tell your potential buyers everything you know about the product you are selling. But telling your potential customers everything about your product will only leave then with more questions about it than interest in the product (that is if they have the time to listen to everything you have to say).

Too much information about a product will lead to more analysis of the product by your audience and as they start to analyse your product more, they will begin getting more logical (than emotional) about your product hence emptying your advert of the “feel” effect a good advert should have on those who see it.

Consider the advert above of the TECNO phone. A smartphone like one of those shown in the advert surely has many features and functionalities and yet, all that the advert tells us about the phone are the megapixels of the phone’s camera.

Don’t lie to your potential customers and don’t withhold critical information about your product from them, but, when marketing your product, don’t tell your audience everything you know about the product.

 Tip 2: Use visuals 

Whenever you visit a social media platform like Twitter, which posts get you to pause your scrolling the most? Is it posts with only text or those with visuals?

Unlike text/words, images and videos easily grab our attention and excite us because we do not have to strain our minds to imagine anything. Therefore, when making a digital marketing plan for your products, be sure to use visuals.

The visuals you use do not necessarily have to be showing the product you are selling because some products like voice bundles cannot be photographed but never put out a post about your product without a visual.

For products that can actually be photographed like a book, a phone, land, etc., including a visual of what you are selling adds to the credibility for your advert.

Tip 3: Make the information in Tip 1 most pronounced 

After you have identified the key things you want your prospective customers to know about your product, make sure you make those easily seen and appreciated.

There is so much information online and on social media most people do not have the luxury of time to zoom in on your advert to read information about your product that you made almost invisible to the naked eye.

If your product’s competitive advantage is its lower price, make sure the price is conspicuous. Your target audience should be able to clearly see the price of your product as indicated on your advert at first glance.

Resist the temptation to make other information on the advert like your logo most prominent in your advert because your logo, for example, adds little (if anything) to any person’s appreciation of what you are selling. Focus on the product

Tip 4: Speak to the needs of the market (not how you feel about the product) 

This tip is directly connected to tip 1. Quite often, people who create adverts render them powerless in as far as getting people to like the products being advertised because the designers focus more on showcasing their artistic/design skills. For example, advert creators can use fonts that are hard to read just because they consider those fonts very artistic and trendy. Sometimes, adverts are designed to massage the egos of those who own or made the product by focusing on what the product owner likes most about the product.

Consider the assignment I gave you above. You cannot market a car the same way to all of three groups (I hope you didn’t). For each group, you must, guided by your awareness of that group’s needs, choose a few features about the car that you are confident will get the prospective buyers excited about buying the car.

For example, availability of plenty of sitting space may not be exciting for you as an unmarried sales executive, but it is most likely a deal maker/breaker for a young couple with children because most couples with children want a car with enough space for them and their children.

They say the customer is king so let your advert speak in the king’s language and the king will buy from you.

Tip 5: Include a call to action 

An advert for any product without a call to action with like a beautiful romantic relationship between a man and a woman where the man never proposes because he believes [in his heart] the girl knows his intention is to marry her. Another man will likely marry that girl.

After you have included all you must and need to include on that advert for your product, tell your prospective customer what they need to do after falling in love with your product. This is the “DO” part of effective digital marketing.

It is not enough to get your audience excited about your product and not tell them what they need to do to get that product otherwise that advert will be a waste.

An example of a call to action is telling your audience to call a certain number to place their orders.

Tip 6: Be sure your advert reaches your target audience 

When selecting a digital platform to advertise your products/services, you must be sure that platform is able to deliver your advert to your target market.

Social media platforms like Facebook have very robust marketing algorithms that can ensure your advert is seen by particular groups of Facebook users classified according to their age, geographical location, sex, relationship status, etc. Make use of this.

SIDENOTE: Do not assume your target market is online because you are online. Always find out where your potential customers are and market your products to them there, even if that means you marketing offline.

I always enjoyed putting my creative juices to use designing banners advertising MD chapattis and sharing them on the MD Enterprises Facebook page. But after posting those adverts for some time and not getting any orders I ditched marketing on Facebook and went downtown Kampala to find market for my chapattis and I was overwhelmed by the market I found there for my chapattis.

Tip 7: Track advert reach and impact 

When it comes to digital marketing, be sure that the platform you use for airing your advert can offer you analytics for how your advert is fairing just like WhatsApp does for status updates.

Most digital platforms today will tell you how many people have viewed your advert, where those people viewed it from (the physical address of the devices they used to view the advert), what time they viewed the advert, whether they simply viewed or actually clicked on the advert, etc.

All the above information is critical for you as an online marketer because it helps you appreciate how your advert is doing so your anticipation for sales is not wishful but rather informed by an awareness of how many people have actually expressed interest in your advert.

With digital marketing you must know your advert's reach and the impact it's having otherwise you will be marketing blindly.

Tip 8: Optimise your adverts for viewing on mobile devices 

Today it is impossible to think about digital without thinking about mobile devices. Most people who access the Internet and visit different digital platforms do so using mobile devices because most of them are now smart and always on us. 

It is therefore paramount that as you design your advert, you optimize it for viewing on mobile devices. Do not put out adverts that require people to first activate screen rotation mode for them to be able to see your advert well. Do not design adverts that requires people to first zoom in before that can see the details on the advert. As much as possible, ensure that viewing your advert does not require your audience to put in any extra effort. They should be able to view you advert as they go about their routine actions without feeling inconvenienced.

There may be some people who will view your advert using for example desktop computers and laptops and it is good practice to always optimize any adverts for viewing on different devices. But if you must error, error on the side of giving it the best view on a mobile device.

Tip 9: Make your advert memorable 

Consider the advert above by MTN Uganda. MTN Uganda is licensed to offer telecommunications and banking services. What on earth is a photo of a man fighting to get his plate of food back from a waiter doing on their advert for Freedom Bundles? And why would they go further and offer such a photo almost 50% of the advert space? Is MTN about to start selling food also?

All that MTN was trying to do and, to a great extent achieved, was to make their advert memorable. The irony makes it memorable. By remembering that scene of the man fighting for his plate of food, many people will also remember the information shared on the right side about the Freedom Bundles.

To make adverts memorable, some companies use famous people on their adverts, others use tunes/beats of popular songs, some use very daring and captivating stunts for their adverts (like Mountain Dew soda often does), etc. You too should strive to make your advert memorable because the more people think about your advert, the more they will think about the product you were marketing through that advert and the higher the likelihood of them buying that product.

If you are not as creative, it is okay. You do not have to do everything all by yourself. You can team up with someone more creative than you are so you can come up with the most memorable advert.

Tip 10: Be ready to stay in people’s faces for a while before you enjoy returns on your marketing 

Think about this: How many Coca Cola adverts do you see in a day? But who does not know [about] Coca Cola? Coca Cola is an internationally recognised strong brand that has been around for years. And yet, in just one day, I can see and listen to over 15 adverts marketing Coca Cola products. 

If a brand as strong as Coca Cola is very deliberate about constantly adverting its products, why do you think that just one advert of your products on Facebook is enough to get you customers? 

I share this tip not to discourage you but more to encourage you and prepare you for the long haul. As a business, have advertising as one of your daily operational engagements with the public because for most people, decision making is a gradual process not instant.

It is also unlikely that you are marketing a product that has never existed. Most likely, what you are marketing is an alternative product (hopefully a better one at that) to the already existing options. Therefore, be patient with the market as you convince them to abandon what they have been using for yours.

The other reason why you should be ready and plan to advertise for some time before you can enjoy returns on your marketing efforts is that most people are not out there looking for adverts. Using advertising giant Facebook as an example, most people (including you) visit the social media site to connect with friends. If you, therefore, want them to take notice of your advert in an ocean of posts by their friends, you must be ready to keep trying to get them “distracted” until you succeed and have their undivided attention. And achieving this will take time.

Effective advertising is a marathon not a sprint.

BONUS TIP 

Always follow the rules of grammar that govern the language of choice for your advert. If your advert is in Rukiga, write love as “Rukundo” not “Lukundo”; if it is in Luganda, write mother as “Maama” not “Mama”; if it is in English, write “You’re” not “Your”.

Any questioning of what you really want to communicate through your advert takes away from that advert’s ability to raise interest in the product being advertised.

The common sense in not allowing homosexuals to raise children

A poisoning of our values as a human race is sweeping across our planet funded by people whose wealth has blinded them to the value of human life and the critical need to preserve it. We must rise up against this wave!

Being unable to provide for a child’s material needs is one of the reasons (classified as child neglect) that can lead to a parent losing custody of their child. Of course, such a legal separation of the child from the parent(s) is necessary sometimes because children have material needs that must be met for them to grow and mature into healthy and productive adults.

Material needs, however, are not the only needs children have. In fact, children’s material needs, although very important, are not paramount. Like me, many children have been born and raised in poverty with hardly enough provisions to meet their material needs. By “international standards”, many parents, especially in the financially poor countries are guilty of child neglect and would have lost custody of their children had the international standards on child well being been applied without fear or favour.

Ironically, being raised in poverty notwithstanding, millions of children raised in poverty (sometimes with support from charity organisations like Compassion International which sponsored my education) grow up to become the most productive and influential members of society.

It is obvious, as countless life stories will prove, that as a child grows up, they can, through hard work, overcome the poverty in their lives and become financially prosperous. This later-in-life self-renewal is however very hard to achieve (often impossible) when it comes to the values a child is raised with.

Values do not necessarily have to be taught because children pick up the values lived out in whichever environment they are raised.

This catching of values is the reason why many, even among born again Christians, unaware of the fact that children pick up values, have come to believe in generational curses. A promiscuous parent or a drunkard ashamed of their ways and wishing a better way of life for their child(ren) labours to raise them under proper instruction (often including the teachings from the Bible) and yet the children end up with the same vices and addictions as the parent(s). “Values are caught not taught,” a father of two children (now young adults) once told me.

A proverb in the Bible reminds us that children will not depart from the way in which they raised. Therefore, anyone participating in the upbringing of a child or children should train them (which has more to do with role modelling for them) how they should live. (Proverbs 22:6)

An article by the BBC published today (17/03/2021) reported that there are over 50,000 children currently being raised by homosexual partners (who refer to themselves as parents) in Poland. What should we expect from these children later in life? Will/can those 50,000 children grow up and somehow value the union between a man and a woman? And if those children (who will be adults then) cannot value the source of life (a union between a man and a woman), how will they value life?

The hypocrisy of the human race has never been so obvious and saddening. With one hand we hold out placards preaching environmental conservation (climate change) because we recorgnise that without a natural environment, our God-given habitat to live in, humanity will not have a home to live in and flourish and yet with the other hand we raise placards claiming the rights and freedoms of men who want to have fellow men as sexual partners and women who want to have fellow women as sexual partners, an complete deviation from the God-given guidelines on sexuality for the human race. Who bewitched us?

If we allow men to have sexual relations with fellow men and women to have sexual relations with fellow women, where will the people for whom we are gravely concerned and are labouring and investing heavily to conserve the environment for come from? Will children grow in rectums of men? Or will women fertilise fellow women? It is time we allowed common sense to take its rightful place in the story of humanity.

Children have a right to be raised in an environment that allows them appreciate and cherish the source of human life and the un-substitutable contribution that each of the sexes brings to the creation of life. A person or persons not willing to role model the unit of the family as a union between a man and a woman should have no business raising up a child.