One of the cool-hunters explained that it
is because it is the best, she then confessed
to having a full bag of them at home.
Another one, a young female DJ in town
explained that, the avocadoes also known
as Guacamole at Cook Out on K24 TV
program are actually bae. I remembered
a presentation that won the best paper
award at 2018’s Africa Market Research
Association (AMRA) convention in Villa
Rosa Kempinski Nairobi by Tory Gente
from USA. Aptly titled, “10 Tinder dates
in a week!? In a World of Social, Our
Recruits Are ALREADY in the Palm
of our Hand.” From the 10 dates, she
unveiled interesting nudgets of insights
to us.
Another cool hunter talked of how her
profile on twitter that only reads, ‘Avocado
is bae’ meaning its all you need which we
link to the award winning paper. Probably,
like the 2018 MSK Gala Judges Choice
award winning Brookside Illara milk
campaign, avocado has ‘Mayoyoyo’ some
hard to explain ingredients that give you
real ‘kicks’ every day.
Avocado has not always been known for
being sexy; beer brand Citizen refers. The
brand has since been withdrawn from the
market. It had a screaming green label
which resulted to its consumer referring to
it as, Gikorobia a local name for avocado.
As the cheapest bottled beer launched
specifically to keep people away from illicit
liquor which had killed several consumers
and resulted to blindness of others at the
time, consumers would remove the label
before consuming the content in order
to spare themselves the shame of being
associated with cheap. Since then the
practice of marketing low cost alcoholic
brands has been based on aspirations with
brand names such as Senator and Legend.
Maybe it’s time for Diageo to revisit the
idea and re-launch the Citizen brand
in the new found avocado fame. That
being the first mention of possible brand
thinking lets us now look at the insight in
avocadoes new rise.
It’s the Millenials, Stupid!
Wake Up and Don’t Smell the
Coffee, Say Guacamole!
To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s quote
explaining market behaviors that are
hard to understand, ”It’s the economics,
The arrival of Millenials has been announced
loud and clear by the rise of avocadoes. To
millenials it is a snack, a spread, making
chocolate shakes and a spice of some sort, it is
bae and as the name suggests it comes Before
Anyone Else, an admirable brand persona any
brand would wish for, a strange thing for a
commodity to achieve.
Stupid!” Back to AMRA 2018, the 2nd
Runners up Best paper award winners
were Kenyans; JP Murunga & Njeri
Wangari of Geopoll for their paper titled
“Understanding the African Millennials:
A misunderstood generation". Not to
mention the 1st runners up winner by
Nigerians whose paper stressed that the
future of Market research is qualitative.
Qualitative research helps you to sift
through the signal from the noise. The
link between avocadoes and Tinder dates
is right there, it’s a millenials thing.
The arrival of Millenials has been
announced loud and clear by the rise of
avocadoes. To millenials it is a snack,
a spread, making chocolate shakes and
a spice of some sort, it is bae and as the
name suggests it comes Before Anyone
Else, an admirable brand persona any
brand would wish for, a strange thing for a
commodity to achieve.
A friend who recently relocated to France
tells me that the price of a small avocado
in Paris is 3 Euros which is in excess
of KShs. 300. As result of this trend a
company quoted in The Nairobi Stock
Exchange (NSE) uprooted coffee bushes
and planted avocadoes to the excitement
of its mainly old generation baby boomers
investors. A market analyst tweeted;
Kenya is now curtailing its widely known
coffee and tea production for avocadoes.
A Kenyan markets and stock analyst, Aly
Khan of Rich Management observes that,
“the Millenials with their Avocado eating
and crypto currency trading ways are just
as likely to be African as they are European
or American”. This was in reference to the
rise of E-commerce and how millenials
are calling the shots. He mentioned this
in his column in the Star Newspaper
where he also mentioned Brexit, Theressa
May and his visit in UK to see the CEO
of Safaricom Bob Collymore who was in
recovery.
In another article titled, “The Avocado
Millenial Economy”, Aly Khan states that,
“we are living in dizzyingly fluid moment”
which include Donald Trump’s Twitter
tat-a-tats among other fast changing
developments.
Aly Khan also the author of the book,
Anyone Can Get Rich referred to a little
known company named Long Island Ice
Tea Corp that renamed itself to Long
Blockchain Corp and gained 625% in the
market pricing as result. Talk of branding
that resonates with the times.
Among all these mentions of important
developments in the world news was the
fact that, last year economist Richard
Thaler, was the Nobel Prize winner in
Economic sciences for his contributions to
behavioral economics. He views this as a
clear indication that behavioral economics
is having an outsize influence on economics
similar to millenials.
Studying the ‘Millenial Crowd’ becomes a
must do for you if you want to thrive now
and in future. Disruptions being the order
of the day, it makes sense not to just wake
up to smell the coffee anymore; you will do
even better by waking up to the Avocado
bae tune. Say, Guacamole.
Boniface Ngahu is a seasoned marketing
research expert and runs the Talking
Point column in Marketing Africa
magazine. He is the Marketing Director
of SBO Research. You can commune
with him on this or related matters via
email at: [email protected],
or follow him on Twitter @bngahu