As I drove through Kigali early this week, there was a strange sense of openness in my peripheral. It was odd, akin to driving in a field. This experience was enabled by the recent removal of billboards in the city.

The uproar that this caused has been of note, particularly with several companies claiming it was done on short notice and will have an overwhelming effect on their business. There have also been a few executives worried about their products lacking an avenue for promotion.

How valid are these concerns?

The world of branding and advertising is as diverse as the number of colours in a rainbow’s spectrum…well, it is quite close. But let’s look deeper into this concept. Brand promotion is essentially a never ending quest to build a relationship with your customer.

The consumer was, is and will always be the focus of any brand and product outreach initiative. The reason we see various promotion activities sprouting is because the nature of the consumers is ever changing; their geography, their tastes, and their influences and, therefore, require companies to adapt to these evolving mindsets.

The billboard is a great invention, because it projects messages to a vast number of people and provides the necessary big brand feel for companies that are seeking to further reinforce their brand message.

If you are in the business of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) this is an un-equaled tool for communication.

But not all businesses are trying to reach the mass market. So while it’s a good way to run a campaign, it’s not the only way. I read an article from one of my friends a few days ago that posed the question "How does a brand stand out?”

Through my professional experiences, I am continuously seeking answers to this question. What I will say is that not all brands need to stand out or have mass impact, but all brands need to connect with and show relevance to their consumers.

Consumer interactions are increasingly shifting to the online space. Your product is reviewed, discussed and judged in the space of 5 minutes on a whatsapp chat group, a brand video is circulated on Facebook to 100,000 people in an hour with thousands of comments in a few minutes, and google lets millions of people ask any kind of question and provides programmed answers through a process called Search Engine Optimization.

These online spaces will undoubtedly be the primary brand promotion options for organisations in the not so distant future. For marketers, this is a business opportunity to exploit as technologies supporting this kind of promotion are on an upward trajectory.

But how do we adopt to the new order of things in the immediate term? Obviously the mention of digital screens has been floated around which is okay. But I want to look beyond that.

My view is that communication has to detach itself from the air up there and resonate on the ground down here – as I mentioned earlier, showcasing relevance and benefits to consumers is key and it requires brands to reach out and connect with the consumer’s truth. Targeted messaging is absolutely vital; find the consumers where they are most comfortable.

Experiential marketing activities, for example, allow brands to be personified, felt by the consumer, which is priceless in today’s highly competitive environment. For both companies and ad agencies, these are viable promotion tools once fully exploited.

Therefore, to remain relevant, the onus will be on us to stay creative and constantly aim to connect with our customers.

The bigger the challenge, the more fun it will obviously get for those in the brand marketing industry seeking to make a mark and advance the game in brand promotion.

The writer is the co-founder and Head of Strategy at Quake Advertising Rwanda.