Waithera Kabiru is currently the Head of Media Futures, at East African Breweries Limited, a subsidiary of Diageo PLC, where she leads the Connection Strategy to ensure efficient and effective connections with consumers. She also ensures compliance with Diageo’s Marketing Code, in all marketing activities.
Kabiru was a pioneer in digital media at Capital FM Kenya, where she started up the digital media team and was responsible for the transformation in the way radio and digital media was consumed. Her focus was making a website that was consistently changing so that consumers would have a great experience. At the time, David Muba was a website consultant and happened to have been hardcoding Capital FMs website; Kabiru wanted to change this! She wanted to move to WordPress, which would effectively see Muba’s hardcoding come to an end – this was their most memorable experience, and a great start to their digital journey.
On the season one iMarket Podcast finale, Capital FMs Digital Director David Muba interviewed Waithera Kabiru. They discuss working with the Late Chris Kirubi, mental health in the digital space and lessons they learned from their digital careers.
Working with the Late Chris Kirubi
While most companies were “not ready” to start making use of websites at the time, Muba’s constant pitching to businesses and failing, finally found success when the late Chris Kirubi saw the potential in making the move to a digital space. Kabiru remembers that the digital team failed in some things and succeeded in others because there was no benchmark or rule book. The team wasn’t making any revenue and it was a huge risk to the company, but Kabiru took the risks to make sure the team would grow. What she and the late Chris Kirubi have in common was their relentless work ethic and quick decision-making skills, “when people are slow to make decisions…it’s fear,” she said. She wants to encourage people to become innovators and disruptors because, in her experience, it’s about progress, not perfection.
Mental Health and the Digital Space
Kabiru recalls going to work one day and being told that her face was swollen. It wasn’t cause for alarm until her face started to droop on one side. Once she had seen a physician, the cause was stress; stress once caused Kabiru to take a mandatory two-week break from work to focus on taking care of her mental health. Her go-getter attitude and strong work ethic were working out for her digital team and career goals, but not herself. Taking care of your mental health while working in the digital space is very important because creatives have a higher chance of mental fatigue due to the high pressure and the critical feedback. As Muba put it, “imagine doing your best and people tell you it’s not the one.” When it comes to mental health, Muba’s way of getting out of constant availability is going offline from noon on Friday and all weekend he’s offline enjoying farming and time with his family.
Lessons Learned
We now live in a digital world and any business or person who refuses to adapt will be lost. Kabiru believes consumers are behaving differently because of COVID, and some of those behaviors will stick because “your COVID customer is your future customer”. Marketers must take note of and adjust to the long-term effects on marketing to consumers in the new normal. All the platforms enable brands to be seen but how you effectively share information is crucial because as Muba stated, “the new consumer makes decisions between scrolls”. It’s up to marketers to be transformed to be fearless and innovative in the digital sphere.
