Unilever asks NMG to take business forum to regions 

Private sector players have asked Nation Media Group – Uganda (NMG-Uganda) to start sponsoring regional Business Thought Leaders’ conferences to act as the voice for business people across the country. 

Mr Anthony Esyalai, the managing director of Unilever Uganda, while meeting a team from NMG-Uganda at their offices on Monday, asked the NMG-Uganda team led by Ms Susan Nsibirwa, the managing director, to emulate what NMG-Kenya did previously by sponsoring business symposia in different parts of the country where business people in those areas were invited to discuss specific issues affecting them.  

“You have many business people you deal with. You can move away from the consumer side and reach out to the business community to create partners on the ground. NMG-Uganda can sponsor a business symposium in Mbarara and hand-pick business people to discuss their issues. We are talking about private sector-led growth, can you give the private sector a voice?” Mr Esyalai asked.
 
He explained that as it happened in Kenya, business people would like this kind of initiative because it creates areas of cooperation to caucus and lobby regional governments to embrace campaigns such as water, hygiene and sanitation.

He added that such platforms also provide avenues to sensitise the business communities in those regions on issues that are taking place in the economy and provide feedback to the government on what the population feels about its policies.

Ms Nsibirwa welcomed the idea and said they visited Unilever Uganda to discuss creative ways of working together and doing things differently. 

She said there is a need to exploit the creative aspect of the media to deliver value for clients such as Unilever Uganda by letting the media deliver the company’s objectives.

“The question is how creative can we get? What horizons can we push so that we do things differently? Some of these things are based on concepts that your marketing teams will develop and we see how we can work to allow us to also push the boundaries because sometimes we can get stuck in old ways of doing things,” she said.

She added that if the two companies can engage their production teams to be more creative when creating content, they can go beyond the usual and obvious methods of advertising and marketing where people just produce content to be noticed without leaving impact.

Mr Esyalai responded that if NMG-Uganda can only exploit the creative space, it will appreciate the goldmine it is currently sitting on.

He said many brands are looking at partnering with companies that would be able to promote their brands countrywide and add value to them through award-winning campaigns.

He further said it is why many companies hire media agencies and advertising firms to handle such functions hoping that they would be able to achieve such targets yet a media house like NMG-Uganda can handle such a task.

NMG-Uganda, among its numerous annual Corporate Social Responsibility activities, hosts the Monitor Thought Leaders Forum where renowned business leaders and industry captains are chosen to speak to a selected audience in Uganda about chosen thematic topics. 

Previous speakers include Nyimpini Mabunda, who last year discussed the impacts and disruptions of artificial intelligence in Africa. Others include Don Strickland, the vice president of Apple and Kodak; Christina Aguilera, the Google CEO; Mr Ashish Thakkar, the President of Mara Foundation; Ms Tabitha Karanja, the former CEO of Kerecho Breweries Kenya; Mr Mohammed Dewji, a Tanzanian businessman; and Vimal Shah, the CEO of Bidco.

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