- Dawn Rowlands, CEO of dentsu Africa, argues that agencies should compete on customer understanding and measurable business outcomes, not public disputes or pitch-room presentations.
- African consumers have distinct media habits, technology adoption patterns, cultural influences and purchasing behaviours that imported global research models may not adequately capture.
- Dentsu has invested in locally developed intelligence tools, including CCS, Consumer Culture Index, COPO and Merkury, to understand African consumers and support brand growth.
- Dentsu’s Orbit platform combines proprietary research, cultural intelligence, social signals and market intelligence to help brands identify opportunities and act on emerging consumer trends.
- Rowlands says agencies should be judged on evidence of their ability to understand customers better than competitors, rather than promises, presentations or case studies from other markets. *
The recent public spat between agency CEOs generated plenty of attention. Good for them.
But if you are a CEO or CMO responsible for growth, there is a far more important question than who landed the better social media punch. Can your agency prove it understands your customers better than your competitors do?
Because agencies do not grow businesses by focussing on each other. They grow them in a market by knowing people better and activating in real time. The grow them by being focussed on outcomes.
Our industry loves a good pitch. The smartest people are flown in. The best slides are polished. The biggest claims are made. Yet the question clients should be asking is remarkably simple: What have you built, and can you prove it works? Not bought. Not licensed. Not imported. Built. In Africa.
Different behaviours
The truth is that much of Africa is still viewed through imported models, imported datasets, and imported assumptions. And yet African consumers continue to behave differently.
They consume media differently. They adopt technology differently. They move between formal and informal economies differently. They create culture differently.
They make purchasing decisions differently.
Anyone building brands across this continent knows that what works in London, Syndney or Amsterdam does not automatically work in Lagos, Nairobi, or Johannesburg.
Which is why local understanding is not a nice-to-have. It is a commercial advantage.
At dentsu, we made a deliberate decision years ago to invest in building African intelligence rather than relying on African versions of global products.
Our innovation
We built CCS to track consumer attitudes, motivations, and behaviours across African markets over time.
We developed the Consumer Culture Index because demographics tell you who people are. Culture explains why they behave the way they do.
We built COPO because clients should be able to test ideas with real consumers before committing serious investment, reducing the cost of getting it wrong.
We invested in Merkury because identity matters. But identity without context is just data. Real value comes from connecting identity to behaviour, culture, and intent.
We built strategic partnerships across the telecommunications ecosystem because mobile behaviour provides one of the clearest signals available about how consumers live, connect, transact, and move through the world.
These are not tools adapted for Africa. They were built to understand Africa.
Most recently, we launched Orbit, which combines proprietary research, cultural intelligence, social signals, and market intelligence to help brands identify opportunities and respond while they still matter, not weeks after the moment has passed.
Orbit brings together CCS, Consumer Culture Index signals and multiple intelligence sources to reduce the gap between insight and action.
Proving value
What matters is not that we have these capabilities. What matters is that we can prove their value.
Too much of our industry still rewards the best presentation. Clients should be rewarding the strongest evidence. So run the pitch. Challenge your incumbent. Create competition. Demand better thinking.
But when the presentations are over, ask the only question that really matters: Who can prove they understand our customers better than anyone else?
Not with a promise. Not with a case study from another market. Not with a better story. With evidence.
Because growth is not won in the pitch room or by running your competitor down.
It is won long before the pitch begins, by those who have invested in understanding the customer better than anyone else. In Africa, that understanding should come from those who have spent years building it here.
* Summary created by AI
Dawn Rowlands is CEO of dentsu Africa.
