1) Kapil Bhatia is the General Manager of Squad Digital, a digital marketing agency based in Nairobi. Squad Digital handles digital mandates for several major brands in East Africa such as Safaricom, Equity Bank, and Basco Paints. 2) Bhatia notes that client resistance to digital marketing has decreased in the past year as brands now want to understand what the internet can do for them. However, some brands still see digital as just another broadcast channel like TV or radio. 3) Squad Digital emphasizes mobile-first strategies since over 90% of internet traffic in Kenya comes from mobile devices. They help clients define clear digital objectives around sales, reputation, branding, or customer

1. E A S T A F R I C A
BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP
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2. 15 CIO EAST AFRICA BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP
APRIL 2013 Vol 5 Issue 03
Kapil Bhatia, General
Manager of Squad Digital
is the man in charge of the
online image of a number
of brands in the region,
including Safaricom,
Tigo,Warid, Proctor and
Gamble and Equity Bank.
Taking Brands
online
The firm is a digital marketing
agency based out of Nairobi with
operations in Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria
. Started in 2010, the firm is part of Scan Group
which is a listed marketing and advertising con-
glomerate. It includes Squad, Scanad, GWT, Grey,
Ogilvy and itself is part of the WPP group. Squad
Digital has about 85 employees made up of client
servicing, technology teams and creatives.
Bhatia says that Squad works with an in-house
team in one of their clients, be it the communica-
tion, marketing, technology or sales team. The
mantra is to respond to business challenges. If a
brand has difficulty reaching
a certain audience, the firm
sees what role it can play. The
aim can range from bringing
in more money from sales,
product usage or bringing
down the cost of contacting the
customer.
The group handles the entire digital mandate of
Safaricom including the website, social media en-
gagement and media buying. Squad is also help-
ing Equity Bank get active on the digital platform.
Basco Paints ends up being an interesting client
as people do not go online to buy paints. Here, a
new website is being made for Basco with the aim
of helping people engage more with the brand.
“Marangi, the brand ambassador is known to help
people buy the right paint and make life colourful,”
he says.
For Standard Chartered Bank, the campaign
helped in increased lead generations which led to
more signups for credit and debit cards. A promo-
tion called ‘Share and win’ helped spread aware-
ness of the credit cards available. The promotion
netted 20,000 fans in 3 to 4 weeks.
Bhatia says that resistance among clients on
whether to get online or not has disappeared
over the last year. The question has now changed
to “What can my brand do on digital,” he says.
Internet exposure has exposed many marketing
and brand managers to what is happening on
the space. “They are looking at international case
studies, they are looking at what people are doing
in other parts of the world where the Internet is
more mature,” he says. Nowa-
days, Bhatia says, he gets more
queries on what the Internet
can do for a brand.
This he says is a big step in
Kenya, where the country has
overcome the obstacle of going digital. Challenges
though still exist such as limited understanding of
digital media. “A lot of people are looking at it as a
broadcast channel. If I am buying airtime on radio,
on TV, can I buy some online? That is much bigger
challenge to overcome,” says Bhatia.
Safaricom started off experimenting a lot on
digital, which it still does to date. The company has
remodeled their entire customer service platform.
This ends up presenting a cheaper customer
service channel compared to a telephone contact
centre. Five minutes that would be spent answer-
ing a single phone call are now spent answering 10
to 15 tweets. This gives more value to the business
as a contact centre while also giving prompter
service to the customer.
Customers can now access
a self care centre using
keywords such as “data”,
“BlackBerry”.
Continued on page 23
Kapil Bhatia, General Manager of Squad Digital
TrendANALYSIS
Dennis Mbuvi

3. 23 CIO EAST AFRICA BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP
APRIL 2013 Vol 5 Issue 03
In 2011, Squad digital spent
time talking to customer support
at Safaricom, and ended up creat-
ing a database of over 1,500 ques-
tions which were being asked.
Customers can now access a self
care centre using keywords such
as “data”, “BlackBerry”. This brings
up the most asked questions in
these categories and customers
are able to solve the issues on
their own. Bhatia says that the
self care centre again reduces
the pressure on customer care
through reduction on calls made.
Squad Digital also places a mobile first emphasis on
its approach, as it believes missing out on mobile cuts
out a lot of users. “Sometime last year, Communica-
tions commission of Kenya (CCK) was saying 945 to 955
of Internet traffic in Kenya comes from mobile, which
means if your engagement is not accessible on the mo-
bile platform, you are not talking to a large base of the
client,” he says. Mobile is thus a strong component of
their campaign briefs to customers, unless in situations
where the target is a niche targeted only
to desktops.
Digital objectives can range from
bringing in sales, improving brand repu-
tation, brand building or customer care.
Brands have to spend time thinking of
what the objective of going digital is. By
defining a clear objective, the return on investment (ROI)
ends up being clear to the brand. For sales, the ROI can
be spent versus money made.
However, Squad Digital approached digital more as a
cost saving channel than a marketing cost. “We haven’t
asked clients to give us money to go online and buy Ads,
we always try to put an objective at the end of it,” he
says. If the objective is to have a certain number of Face-
book fans, the acquisition and media buying has been
focused on the same. An objective to increase signups
for a credit card ends up being to drive more traffic to
the website with information on the credit card which
then helps you sign up for the same. This varies from tra-
ditional media where one puts up a billboard and hopes
as many people see it.
As part of the social media strategy, Squad works with
clients to assist them not turn Facebook and Twitter into
broadcasting channels, where they pass on irrelevant
information to their followers. The objective is to keep
engagement high.
For social media conversations, there’s a 70-20-10
rule. 70 percent is conversations that happen around
the category and interest areas of the client. 20 per-
cent is soft selling where one does not out rightly urge
a customer to purchase, but instead gives the value
proposition of a purchase. 10 percent brings out the hu-
man aspect of the brand. A customer should not pose a
question and see it go unanswered.
Brands, however, should not shy away
from social media. Either way, peo-
ple will still talk about the brand. The
brand should go online and resolve the
issues and mend its brand reputation.
At times, people come to vent online
because they have no idea who to get in
touch with. Opening up a communica-
tion channel online
Bhatia says the continued arrival of bandwidth in the
country creates an excellent opportunity for the firm. An
increasing number of people end up online consuming
data creating an excellent platform where brands can
engage with them. Brands like Huawei and samsung are
expected to bring in cheaper smartphones which again
will increase the number of people online.
Squad Digital is looking at moving brands from being
aware about social media to showing them what they
can do on digital platforms. Brands that have been on
the digital platform for awhile, such as Safaricom, will
move to experimenting with new technology such as
Microsoft Surface and touch and gesture technology.
The company was among the first in Kenya to acquire a
Microsoft Surface Table in 2011 with the aim of experi-
menting at what it can achieve for various clients.The
group also plans to spend more time spending local
talents in a bid to bridge the capacity challenge
For social media
conversations,
there’s a
70-20-10 rule.
Continued from page 15