Business
East Africa: Booming economies, a market worth $1 billion, attracts global ad agencies
With this strategy, Scangroup has grown its market share in the region to nearly 80 percent, bagging most of the big deals.
Bigger Footprint
The group does not see this changing even with new entrants.
“Competition will always come in, but a lot of our clients expect us to deliver across multiple African countries and not only east Africa because we have a fairly large infrastructure,” said Bharat Thakrar, Scangroup’s founder and CEO.
“We acquired Ogilvy because they had a bigger print across Africa, which expanded our base on the continent.”
Scangroup stole a march on Omnicom and its U.S. peer Interpublic by buying Ogilvy & Mather, giving it access to new markets in Africa.
Small ad agencies in east Africa are also seeking to embrace global firms so as to extend their regional presence, and secure bigger and more lucrative deals.
