MAKING WAVES IN RURAL KENYA
With the sun setting over the Rift Valley in Kenya, Sebastian Herrmann walked back to his tent with a head full of questions. He was at a loss as he wondered what kind of marketing campaign would ensure that every family that should use a WaterHarvester received one. If he could answer this question, he could see the potential to significantly improve the living, conditions for many of the amazing people he had met over the last couple of weeks during his April 2007 visit.
Just yesterday, the first prototype of the WaterHarvester had been installed and worked far better than he and his fellow students could have hoped for. It had been thrilling to see that the prototype had collected enough water with last night’s short rainfall to give a cup of clean water to each of the family’s children, cook a small meal, and still have some water left for the rest of the day! As Hermann thought about the possibilities he became very excited about what this product might mean for the region’s “hardcore poor,” a group that was hit the hardest by the harsh living conditions in rural Kenya.
Once he got back to camp, he started to realize that there were a lot of answers needed before everybody in the community could benefit from gathering rainwater with the new WaterHarvester. Rainwater was a lot cleaner than the river water that the hardcore poor were used to drinking. He began wrestling with questions such as: How should it be marketed in a world where few of the conventional marketing communication channels even existed? How was he going to convince people to spend what was (for them) as large amount money when they did not even have enough to provide food for their families? And, would he need to consider changing the culturally entrenched practice of meeting at the river to gather the contaminated water that passed for drinking water?
Having almost reached his tent he found himself lost in the most important marketing challenge of his young...
