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MAKMENDE’S GOT ME COVERED!

It’s been a while, damn! And consistency hasn’t been my greatest asset lately. I’ve now got a throbbing headache after my (not so much fun) weekend trip to the Coast to cover the landing of the Eassy Cable. It wasn’t as great, and as organized as the SEACOM cable. which I blogged about here.

Different strategies work for different people, but after Seacom, lets just say easy was quite the landing, Phogisio says "EASSY wasnt so easy!"

Unlike Seacoms' social media savvy launch ( They had a blog, a welldone website, had Live streaming TV from 3 landing sites, and a tweeter team ( only KTN’s Larry Madowo & I were live tweeting the EASSY event for fun) that was the exciting part.

It was a well attended event though; Sec General of the ITU Hamadoun Touré, Kenya’s Minister for Info; Hon Samuel Phoghisio, CCK Director General, MTN was well represented; so were other stakeholders within the consortium. The biggest shareholder WIOCC handled the launch. It wasn’t the most organized launch I have been to. But the cable did land, and that’s good news; the rest are details:-I

While in Mombasa though, internet fever got the better of me, and I spent a whole lot of time on twitter & Facebook, keeping up to date info on the landing, the French boys ( those that keep the pirates at Bay) landed in a sweet Navy ship!

Twitter, of course is my latest online buddy. I keep tabs of who does what, where, and whatever catches my eye.

Makmende did!

Who the heck is Makmende?

Here are a few responses from the Internet:

Ken Karuri: He ain’t a person, he is THE person. He is like the love child of Jack Bauer, n Chuck Norris, fed on Rambo's diet, trained by van dam , Bruce lee".....

Twitter: When the snake tempted Makmende to eat the fruit, Makmende ate the snake:

Twitter: Makmende Turned a Toyota Vitz into a car.

Twitter: Makmende doesn’t need his vitamin pills, he swallows Orange ( Telkom Kenya) simcards.

Makmende is actually from a music video; A local rock band ( Just a Band) created their music video (ha he) around a character called Makmende, who they call ( your super hero’s Super hero)

What amazes me is the buzz around Makmende. Everyone’s talking about it; from Twitter to Facebook and other internet outlets.

It is like an epidemic that can’t stop spreading.

Took me back to a book I recently bought by Malcom Gladwell called “The Tipping Point”- How little things can make a big difference: Where it talks about marketing & branding strategies that are made as a viral and spread like an epidemic. Makmende (Just a band) mastered the art of the Tipping Point whether consciously or subconsciously., and it has spread like wildfire in the social networks. The video on you tube currently has 16, 503 viewers today 15.07 Kenyan time.( even though it is a brand new video)

Branding Strategists have a lesson to learn here:

Makmende identified the “connectors” and the viral is on the prowl on…it will be interesting to see how far this goes:

till then,

Makmende’s got me covered! :-)

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