Fiti probiotic yogurt, allegedly Africa’s first probiotic yogurt, has had its official launch party. We organized a massive music festival to celebrate Fiti –complete with the hottest musicians, free yogurt samples and t-shirts, face painting and dance, rap and yogurt chugging competitions! Fiti was the hit of the town and hundreds of people came from all over to join in on the party. It was an absolutely incredible day and the end goal of our concert was achieved – to increase brand awareness and explain the health benefits of probiotic yogurt.
While the day of the music festival went off much better than expected, we had a few hiccups leading up to the big day. The first thing that should be noted is that the festival was originally supposed to happen the week before, July 16th. Three days before the festival we were informed that there was going to be a “YES” rally (supporting the upcoming referendum) on the same fairgrounds we had booked. We decided to push everything back, which in hindsight was a very good decision. There is no way that we would have been able to complete everything in three days, it was even a close call with the extra week.
The hiccup that caused the most stress was the screen printing of 4,000 plastic yogurt bags and 100 t-shirts. We had placed our order almost a month in advance of the original date of the festival, but seeing as everyone works on ‘African time’, the order was obviously not completed until late the night before. We budgeted extra time into our schedule for ‘African time’ laybacks, but we never anticipated a full week.
One of my goals coming over here was to learn about the implications of culture on business. Organizing this music festival has really opened my eyes to the differences in business operations and practices between the Western world and Africa. Customer appreciation and service is very rare, few people follow deadlines and the quality standards of products are much lower. For example, the t-shirts we ordered were given to us covered in ink stains, with huge holes, dirt and oil marks and the actual screen printing was illegible. Back home anyone would have immediately returned the product and asked for a refund or replacement free-of-charge. We had to accept most of these t-shirts and paid an additional fee to have the defective products repaired. This is only one of the many differences I have experienced thus far; I’m interested to see what else will happen in my remaining few weeks.
All in all, the festival was a huge hit and Fiti is now the talk of the town. We had the audience laughing at skits, dancing on stage, drinking yogurt and generally having a great time. The mamas sold tons of yogurt and got to meet a lot of new clients; I cannot wait to see the results of our marketing efforts in a few weeks’ time!
While the festival was a great day for Fiti and the mamas, there are some underlying problems that are affecting operations. Most of these issues we are facing have arisen due to cultural differences and communication problems. First of all, the structure of the overarching Fiti organization is supposed to support fellow kitchens and promote teamwork. We’re trying to encourage the mamas to share their best practices with the sister kitchen, rather than view it as competition.
A few serious issues were brought to our attention after the festival was over. Apparently the mamas were selling yogurt at varying prices depending on who the customer was. For example, if a person of known superior status was purchasing yogurt, they would charge them an extra 5 Ksh. Also, we had purchased 2,000 samples from the kitchens to give out for free for people to taste. It turns out that the mamas were charging people for these samples. Finally, some of the mamas were charging 50 Ksh for one bag of yogurt that should have cost 10Ksh during the “Buy 50 Ksh of yogurt and get a free t-shirt”.
We are working with the mamas on topics like these to help them understand the importance of customer service and establishing a good brand name. We want them to understand why treating a customer well is important and we need people to see Fiti as a fair, healthy and trustworthy company. These are just a few of the things that we’re including in our business lesson this week –hopefully it will be well received.
Read more and see pictures here: http://kinleighheadseast.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post_994.html
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