Marketing Shake-Up: Forget Campaigns, Focus on Growth Design
Marketing professionals in Kenya were challenged at the MSK Marketers Conference 2026 to drive economic growth by embracing data, technology, and customer insights. Speakers emphasized designing growth through enhanced customer experience, trust, and innovation, moving beyond traditional communication roles. The conference also explored the transformative impact of AI and the importance of measuring business outcomes.
Kenya's marketing professionals have been issued a significant challenge: to leverage data, technology, and customer insights to become key drivers of the nation's economic growth. This crucial call emerged from the Marketing Society of Kenya (MSK) Marketers Conference 2026, a two-day event held in Mombasa on September 10 and 11, under the compelling theme “Growth by Design: Marketing for a Changing Economy.”
MSK Chairperson Zuhura Odhiambo underscored the evolving role of marketers, urging them to transcend traditional communication functions. She emphasized the imperative for marketers to actively participate in shaping customer experience, fostering innovation, building trust, influencing business strategy, and creating long-term value. Odhiambo articulated that growth is not an inherent outcome but rather a deliberate design, necessitating a profound understanding of the customer, a distinct value proposition, and the capacity to seamlessly integrate creativity, technology, and commercial objectives.
Adding to this perspective, John Paul Okwiri, CEO of the Technopolis Development Authority, highlighted the intensifying competition and dynamic shifts in consumer behavior. He asserted that organizations must increasingly rely on data to make precise, informed decisions regarding resource allocation. Okwiri also noted the transformative impact of technology on how consumers access information and evaluate brands, making the cultivation of trust more challenging and its loss more facile.
June Chepkemei, CEO of the Kenya Tourism Board, encouraged marketers to adopt a holistic view, focusing on the entire customer journey rather than merely isolated campaigns. Chepkemei eloquently defined “growth by design” as the antithesis of