“He who thinks he is leading and has no one following him is only taking a walk.”
Malawian Proverb

What this country has witnessed in the last one year of political campaigning, coalition building and horse-trading shenanigans will fill a political science class with case studies for the next few years. But it should also make for an interesting marketing class discussion on two critical marketing elements called brand awareness and brand affinity.

Brand Awareness is the extent to which a brand is recognized by potential customers, and is correctly associated with a particular product. Expressed usually as a percentage of target market, brand awareness is the primary goal of advertising in the early months or years of a product’s introduction.
Brand awareness is the extent to which the consumer associates the brand with the product he desires to buy. It is the brand recall and the brand recognition of the company to the consumers. Brand recall is the ability of the consumer to recollect the brand with reference to the product whereas brand recognition is the potential of the consumer to retrieve the past knowledge of the brand when enquired about the brand or shown an image of the brand logo. A brand name that is well known to the great majority of households is also called a household name. Thus, in the case of mobile telephones, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry and Apple have strong brand awareness associated with them. When Joe Blow walks into a shop and wishes to purchase a phone, he will typically recognize any one of the abovementioned brands as they stand out as household names in the mobile telephony field. Similarly, as we walk into the voting centre today, there will be eight presidential candidates of whom we have to select one. Prior to the presidential debates last month, perhaps only six names had brand awareness. However, following the wide-ranging and massive exposure on national television and radio, we were made aware of two more. But the same cannot be said of the candidates for Governor, Senate, Member of Parliament, Women Representative and County Assembly Ward Representative. The candidates for these positions have had an extremely limited platform to raise brand awareness and have relied largely in part on their own financial capacity to raise their profiles through road shows and campaign rallies in their respective localized domains. I speak very honestly when I say that as I wake up this morning in the county of Nairobi where I will vote, I am only aware of three Governor candidates, two Senator candidates and two Women Representative candidates.

I have absolutely no idea who is running for a position in my constituency as neither Member of Parliament nor County Assembly Ward Representative. I’m I proud of my ignorance? No. But the fact is that the brand awareness for these positions is sorely lacking again primarily due to the lack of financial capacity required.

Brand affinity, meanwhile, is about a consumer having an emotional connection with a brand. And as it goes with emotions, these feelings aren’t always logical – but are certainly real and strong. Think also of brands like Apple or Harley Davidson – while these brands stand for well understood attributes such as innovation, and freedom of personal expression, people often buy these brands because they identify with them and want them to be part of that shared identity. They perceive the brand as representing or complementing some highly personal aspect of their persona, or their values – or believe being associated with these brands makes them more “cool.” Thus the same Joe Blow who walks into a shop to buy a mobile phone will have a high brand awareness about four brands but may have an emotional connection to just one because it’s the in-thing at his place of work or amongst his peers and he wants to be associated with that brand. Having said that, Joe might have a brand affinity for one brand, but his pocket may have an affinity for another!

Similarly on the election front today, there may be some candidates that we have an emotional connection to. Perhaps it is their values that we passionately subscribe to, their work ethic, their historical performance or the fact that they have personally and positively touched our lives in some shape or form. Sadly, as has been oft described in the media, the affinity to many of the candidates today will come primarily from tribal affiliation, as that is a very strong Kenyan emotional connector. The feelings aren’t always logical, but they are certainly real and strong! The frightening thing about emotions is that they can drive humans to do stupid things. Affinity for any of the candidates today, illogical or not, should not drive us to become belligerent in the case of their loss at the ballot.

The candidates today are a product like any other. They have steadily built their awareness, some more successfully than others. They have the power to raise our emotions and take a firm stand in favour of or against some of them. Nokia and Blackberry have strong brand awareness but rapidly diminishing brand affinity due to failure to successfully innovate in the smartphones arena. They are both gasping for air to survive in a declining sales environment. They may even be kicked into the annals of history as has-beens. Their customers will not riot, sulk or kick up a storm in the streets consequently. They will more likely shrug their shoulders and move on to what other products remain in the market. Their purchase of other products may not be driven by brand affinity, but by brand awareness alone.

We have many products on the balloting box today. We are probably aware of only a few of them and have a very strong affinity to even fewer. If our product choices don’t win, we have to shrug our shoulders and deal with what the majority of the market has chosen. Vote wisely today.

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Twitter@carolmusyoka