The battle for control of Kenya’s lucrative advertising and public relations business has intensified with consultancies keen to close in new clients ahead of an uncertain year.

From late last year, several key accounts have changed hands with giant communication firms losing key clients to relatively small, upcoming consultancies as companies shop for new handlers. It is understood a big shake-up is looming in the consultancy business in Kenya’s ICT, financial and manufacturing sectors in coming months as firms prepare for a fresh round of rivalry.

Beer maker East African Breweries last week recruited Nuturn Bates — a media firm associated with the global marketing communications network Worldwide Partners Inc — to handle its corporate communications, one of the industry’s most lucrative accounts, previously handled by Ogilvy PR.

Late last month, Ogilvy PR snatched a contract to handle media relations for Tatu City from Africapractice. Tatu City, a  Ksh350 billion ($4 billion) real estate project to be built on a 1,000 hectares plot in Kiambu county on the outskirts of Nairobi, is a joint venture between Renaissance Partners, the principal investment arm of Renaissance Group, and Kenya’s Tatu City Ltd. 

In the financial sector, KCB, Kenya’s largest bank by assets, has hired Ogilvy PR to handle its communications business, an account previously held by Gina Din.

Korea-based electronics firm LG has picked Scanad Group’s subsidiary Hill & Knowlton to handle its local media relations, an account that was being handled by Gina Din Corporate Communications.

But Gina Din is not taking the competition lying down. The firm, which handles major ICT-related firms including Kenya’s mobile industry market leader Safaricom, has just signed up Ericsson (in a joint venture with Weber Shandwick) and is keen to clinch the Telkom Orange PR job. Weber Shandwick handles Ericsson’s communications in South Africa.

Rising spend

The battle for lucrative accounts is being driven by the rising marketing and advertising spend by companies and state corporations. Data from Synovate shows total government advertising spend grew to 9 per cent of the total ad spend market for the nine months to September 2011, totalling $24.7 million. The private sector, however, is still the biggest ad spender, with mobile service providers taking the lead.

Ogilvy and Mather East Africa, have edged out rivals to pocket several lucrative government tenders over the past six months. Government statistics show the firm secured contracts worth $1.54 million.