During that time, I remember something my former boss, Mr. Vikram Tejpal, once told me that fundamentally changed how I think about marketing strategy. He would often say:“ Posters, gifts and leave-behind literatures are not strategies. They are simply tools meant to help you own a space in the customer’ s mind. So the real question is: what space do you want to own? Now that is your strategy.”
That idea stayed with me because it reframed marketing completely. Too often, teams confuse activity with strategy. They focus on posters, activations, giveaways, branding materials, or visibility before first asking the more important question: what exactly should the customer remember about us? To Mr. Tejpal, tactics were only outputs. The real strategy began with identifying the psychological position the brand wanted to occupy in the customer’ s mind. Everything else was supposed to“ flow” from that. Interestingly, he used the word“ flow” constantly. The customer objective informed the strategy. The strategy informed the message. The message informed the tactics. The tactics informed execution. That way of thinking became extremely important for Kaluma Spray. Instead of trying to communicate everything at once, we focused on one clear customer idea:“ Get set. Spray. Go!”
The message was simple, fast, practical, and easy to remember. More importantly, it immediately communicated movement, readiness, and convenience. Customers understood the product quickly. Retail conversations became easier. The positioning gave the sales team a much clearer and more confident story to take into the market. What initially appeared to be a
29 MAL72 / 26 ISSUE
small messaging decision ended up influencing execution much more deeply than expected. Once the positioning became clear, decisions around activations, pharmacy engagement, rugby partnerships, and communication channels became easier because the brand finally had a coherent center of gravity. And that is often what strong strategy does. It simplifies decisions across the entire system.
Focused |
Execution |
Beats |
Scattered |
Execution |
|
|
|
Importantly, we focused our execution on two places that mattered most: pharmacy execution and conversations within rugby communities. Instead of spreading resources too thin, we concentrated on environments where the product positioning felt naturally relevant and easy to understand. Activations around events such as Dala 7s and the HSBC rugby tournaments allowed the brand to feel energetic, practical, and culturally aligned with movement, recovery, and performance. The simplicity of the message made the execution feel almost effortless because people immediately understood it.
What followed was the result of strong alignment between strategy and execution. Supported by the brilliant execution of a highly persuasive sales team that also places strong emphasis on clarity, the SKU closed the year at 220 % of its target while capturing significant market share from competitors in the highly contested analgesics category.
The Game Theory of Challenger Brands
In strategy and game theory, smaller players rarely succeed by competing resource- for-resource with larger incumbents. They succeed asymmetrically. Rather than attempting to outspend competitors, challenger brands often win by simplifying customer decisions faster and more effectively. That was the thinking behind“ Get set. Spray. Go!” The objective was not to say everything. The objective was to create a clear signal in a noisy market.
This matters because modern customers operate under constant informational overload. Attention has become scarce. Consumers are exposed to thousands of competing messages daily, meaning complexity often reduces effectiveness rather than improving it. In many markets today, clarity itself has become a competitive advantage.
This idea closely resembles a concept from information theory known as the signal-to-noise ratio. Originally developed in engineering and telecommunications, the theory explains how signals become harder to detect as surrounding noise increases.
The same principle applies in marketing. In crowded markets filled with competing claims, advertisements, and distractions, customers are more likely to notice and remember messages that are clear, simple, and cognitively easy to process.
In many markets today, the brands that win are not necessarily the loudest. They are often the clearest.
The Precision Leverage Framework
The best marketers may therefore not be the ones with the largest budgets, the loudest campaigns, or the most activity. They may instead be the ones who understand how to deploy limited resources with greater precision and leverage. Because ultimately, sustainable growth is not only about scale. It is about intelligent leverage.
And perhaps that raises the more important strategic question for modern brand leaders: Can you clearly distinguish what is signal and what is noise? The brands that win are not always the loudest; they are the clearest signals in the noisiest markets.
Kenyanito Baraka is a marketing manager and thought leader focused on decision-making, behavioral science, and challenger-brand growth in constrained markets. You can commune with him via email at: Kenyanitobaraka @ gmail. com.