Personal Brand Value
Dictate Your Brand Fiercely
By Pauline Warui
I am sitting at the Kasarani Stadium and the World Rally Championship is taking off in a few minutes. The screens in the Government sponsored tent are well done and it takes a bit of convincing that the Kenyan Government actually delivered this show. After all, the brand Government convinces our minds that quality is not part of the show. A big Kudos to the WRC CEO Mr. Charles Gacheru. The seats are draped in Kenyan colors but not in Zebra patterns. The seats have a touch of class and I should apologize for feeling like I am in a big corporate set-up.
Back to the race. I am nostalgic as I remember my childhood in Marua village where we waited for Shekhar Mehtar the Ugandan-born, Kenyan driver who won Safari Rally a record five times. Before that there was Joginder Singh who also created the same thrill. Björn Waldegård was a thrill for us as we watched those cars fight the muddy roads taking corners with a speed that the local OTC Bus would only dream of.
Those were exhilarating memories, deeply entrenched in our young minds. As I sat there, I met many people who are associated with big brands and who lived their brand values. Their mannerisms were well shaped and it was not lost on the fact that we the entrepreneur brand had no reason not to laugh in our vernacular. Loud and heartily without looking behind our well-manicured bosses for acknowledgement.
The crowd had a lot of brand identity. It was meet so and so from brand Y and this is the Financial Director of Brand C. I acknowledged the introductions but what mattered to me is that no one was just a pure Pauline Mother of Clyde. Identity in most of us is the position we hold and once we lose the position, we stop being. We lose identity as the brand is the job we do.
To date, I have really tried to separate my name from the last organization I worked for to gain my own identity. I smiled as I watched the young ones behind me breathe high end air reliving an era that had long passed me. What was hilarious is that my company then was also someone who had lived the big brands and we
Tell your story so that others do not define your brand from the prism of their illusions, myopia or socialization. To the world, you are many things but how do you perceive yourself? At what age do you decide that the world limits you with their understanding of your achievements? When will you be the one allocating and not being allocated a brand tag?
exchange sheepish smiles as we imagined what awaits those who only thrive through a brand created by someone else.
The rally was thrilling and the tier one cars were as captivating as you could imagine. You’ d hear names like the Estonian Ott Tanak and how powerful his Hyundai is or how Thierry Neville was a great star. Then there would be a race between two car brands instead of drivers and they would not be mentioned because the audience consumes their story, the way they package it.
The 2025 WRC Safari Rally was branded and big corporates had made serious investments to catch the eye of their everchanging audience. There were banks, Telcos, Oil companies all trying to gain a share of these customers. I looked at my badge and though it was branded VIP, I was not lost to see more superior humans branded VVIP with full access. These are people who had been branded a notch higher and they had a right to walk more confidently in the arena.
After a few shows of thrill and unabated excitement, the tier one vehicles left the scene and in came the next level. The cars barely made the sexy noises associated with the top rally cars and you could see the level of excitement fading as big boys started looking at their watches and announcing that they should be heading to Mzabibu for the next show at 4pm. The tier 2 brand cars did not match their brand and though these are some of the drivers with the most grueling stories of success, it did not matter to those who rated brands. It was time to chase the VVIP cars too for them. Even the caterers knew this was time to serve food as the big gamers were gone and so was the show. The phone cameras were already‘ tired’ and the memory cards could not accommodate the
60 MAL65 / 25 ISSUE