Fourth stop Kampala

As most of you will know, my main purpose for making all those trips to Uganda is to help my boys to get on their own feet and help them to look after themselves economically. And we have come a very long way since I started all this and when those guys were basically sitting on the street with no prospect for any meaningful future.

With the exception of 2 – and I am working on this one – all are now more or less gainfully employed or self employed, earn their living and have learned a lot. As is life, occasionally, some people lose their job and have to look for a new one.

On this occasion it was Johnny. He had been a lolly seller for quite some time and I was very pleased to see him in some form of employment – he was a bit of a Sorgenkind – But now, I saw him on a daily basis sitting at the lounge table with little expression on his face and quite obviously seriously unhappy. So I knew I had to try to invent something which would give him a new start. And whilst thinking about our other little market businesses, such as Wunderbar, the second hand clothing boutique, GPSS (which stands for Green Point Secretarial Service) our little secretarial service, the hair dressing salon etc. I thought, that GPSS could do with a bit of advertising.





Being in market research for nearly 40 years now, the first thing which came to mind, was obviously to do a survey on the un-prompted and prompted awareness of GPSS amongst the local community. Hence I designed a little survey, the guys did 200 interviews and we established, apart from a few other useful things, that 0% of the people actively knew GPSS (unprompted awareness) after it had been operating for about 12 months. And prompted awareness was around 10%

Now came the idea to me that we could promote the business by using a sandwich man, as we call them in Australia. That is a person who walks around the streets with two advertising boards hanging on the front and back and thus becoming a walking advertising sign. At the same time the sandwich man can also distribute little leaflets and answer questions. And I thought, Johnny was the ideal person for that.





Hence we bought some light timber panels and I designed a few promotional signs which we stuck on the boards, using Velcro dots in order to be able to change them when need be, without having to change the boards. Hence those signs were laminated (by GPSS of course) and stuck on both sides of the board. And, presto, we had a new job for Johnny. He was/is very proud now being the very first sandwich man in Uganda and walks around the local area for about 4 to 5 hours a day.

And as every market researcher would know, you do a follow up survey to check, whether your marketing/advertising has any of the desired effects. And so we did three months later. And what had been a zero unprompted awareness has gone up to 18% and what was 10% prompted, grew to a healthy 48%

Sillyness is part of the game!! Figaros socks and an old look smart Ueberbleibsel





And something happened, which I had hoped for, other businesses around the area saw Johnny walking past every day and thought it to be a good idea. And now we can start ‘selling’ our services to other little businesses in the area and we have the numbers to show that it works!

No visit to Kampala would be complete without visiting Mum at her village and grandma in the African bush.