Chidochemoyo Musasiwa

Many people have seen roadshows promoting one brand or cause or another. To some, they are one of those things. To others, they are just entertainment at the local shopping centre. The truth is that they are one of the key brand marketing communication media used for advertising and are business events too. Business Events spoke with an expert in the roadshow industry, Chido Advertising Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Chidochemoyo Musasiwa, who shared insights on this type of a business event.

• What are a roadshows?

Road shows are what we call below-the-line advertising and some people would call it experiential marketing. The way road shows are conducted is by way of a truck or an SUV that has speakers and the person would have been briefed by a client on what information to disseminate but you can have it in all sorts of voices. So there is an MC who does the talking of whatever the product is about. You can have entertainers who also dance to sort of draw people to where the truck is. It’s basically a moving stage with a performance.

•        What is the role of roadshows in business?

It’s basically another media. When clients want to advertise, it’s always better to spread the media around. Some people will do radio, some people will do television, (and) some people might want to do press. A combination of different media usually makes sure the message goes across. So with road shows we go to where people are whereas in normal circumstances if you want something you go to point of sale and purchase it. If a roadshow is in your neighbourhood you are guaranteed to get the information (on the goods one intends to buy) on your doorstep, within your hood, near your shopping centre and around your area.

 Road shows work primarily in high density areas where there is a high concentration of people. When done in low density areas, the modalities change in terms of execution. In low density areas, people are not necessarily drawn to the roadshow truck. They don’t usually want to stand near the truck. They are more inclined to read the messages that are on the billboard. In low density areas it might work more with sampling, when noise level is lower and you’re not making as much music and getting people to jump onto the truck and have experiential marketing that way. It’s usually to give out sampling of products. It’s a lot more interactive when it’s in the high density areas.

•        What kind of marketing objectives do companies and marketers use road shows to achieve?

Marketing objectives differ for each client. What you want is to get reach. What you want is for people to see, touch and feel the products because remember with roadshows you can touch all the senses unlike some of the other media. I’ll give you the example of bread. When Bakers Inn launched a mass market roadshow, people were tasting the bread, they were seeing the packaging and they were told where they could purchase it from whereas if it’s in the press all you’ll be seeing is the picture of the bread.

So your marketing objective is for the people to interface with the product or the service. It’s not always about a product. We have done a lot of COVID-19 roadshows but they have been more about awareness. Sometimes you’re doing an awareness campaign. Sometimes you’re doing a volume drive. We’ve done stuff for Chibuku and Castle. They were looking at increasing their volumes because they were pushing a sales promotion at the time. So the marketing objectives differ with the stage at which the product is in its life cycle.

 You might have changed your packing and you want people to know that there is now new packaging but the product is exactly the same as we did with Shumba Maheu. So you can sample by tasting so that people can know that this is exactly the same content as was in the old packaging. You can either do it by sampling or by information dissemination, just letting people know that this is our new look and feel but the content is exactly the same.

•        Some people view roadshows as mere entertainment around brands and causes. How seriously do Zimbabwean businesses and marketers take roadshows?

I think they take them pretty seriously because it’s a medium that has been used from as far back as 1994. Promobile was the first local company to do road shows in Zimbabwe and so many companies have opened up since then and almost all of these companies are busy. As mentioned before, strategically any company should be using a combination of media. So at this point in Zimbabwe and Africa in general the response to roadshows is very good because it is something you can measure there and then in terms of sales or numbers of people that would have been exposed to your brand. 

•        How can one tell if a roadshow has been successful or not?

It’s not a direct science in terms of the reach but when you’ve stationed at a place you can count the number of people that are there. You can then extrapolate in terms of how many people might have driven past and seen your billboard but for you to have the number to an exact figure it’s very difficult. This is because even when you are stationed somewhere, there will be people directly in front of the truck, then there are those people at the venue selling food and other stuff that are not necessarily directly in front of the truck but are seeing and hearing everything that is going on. When you drive in the neighbourhood you’ll find that there are people that will come outside their houses to hear what the truck is all about.

 Then you also get people who are within their yards but still hear the roadshow messaging. In high density areas you’ve got an average of five households per house so your reach is quite extensive. So your one cent or three cents per person reach is quite high. Generally you’ll see that a minimum of 15 000 people would have had an experience with your brand on the day of the roadshow within a 6-hour period.

•        What factors should businesses and other roadshow users look at in determining a roadshow company to hire?

They should look at the look and feel or outlook of the truck because you’ll find that there are some companies that want to be in the roadshows business but do not want to use sound trucks. They are just look for any old truck put in any old speaker and say they have a roadshow company. The look and feel of the truck is important and the sound is particularly important because one can’t have a roadshow with a distorted sound or sound that doesn’t carry far.

A good roadshow company should have an energetic team that should grasp the client’s messaging because remember when the road show team is out there they are representing the client’s company and brand. So it’s important that they look the part, they sound the part and can execute to the standards of the client’s organisation.

•        For how long have you been providing roadshow services?

As Chido Advertising, for the past 12 years but I have been in the industry since 1995 because I started working for Promobile so I have been in the industry for as long as I can remember. Essentially, I would say from when I finished school and then I opened up my own establishment and built up my own fleet of vehicles.

•        We understand that you also do other business events. What kind of events are these?

We do all sorts of events. I have been part of the Castle Tankard, I have been part of the Chibuku Road to Fame (and) I host my own events like we run what we call the Let them Art Festival. I was the festival director for the Chimanimani Festival. We run product launches for RG. The list is endless. If you want to do a corporate launch, if you want to launch a product, if you want to have a festival or a musical show we can do that for you. We done stuff for SPAR where we get their suppliers to set up outside of the shop and people come around and they meet. So it’s a broad spectrum. I am not limited to any one particular thing because I have delved into almost every facet of the eventing world.

•        How has COVID-19 affected the operations of roadshow companies?

A lot of the work like with corporate brands was brought to a complete halt and then what was increasing was the NGO work with information dissemination on COVID-19 such as how to avoid getting it and domestic violence. You’ll find that organisations dealing with gender-based violence were increasing the need for roadshows and increasing information dissemination but also inter-weaving it with the COVID-19 messaging. So obviously in terms of your brands like your Delta Corporations and your AfDises and that commercial side of things came to a stop.

•        In your view, what’s the future of the local roadshow industry like?

I think the future is as good as any (marketing communication) medium. Obviously a lot of people are going the social media route and other media can be very expensive. I will go back to my statement again. When you are looking at advertising, you want to look at it as a pie and you want to cut that pie in a way that your budget allows and depending on your product. Part of the pie may be television, part of the pie may be radio, part of the pie may be press, part of your pie may be eventing and part of your pie may be roadshows. The future is as good as people being always alive  and being accessible by this medium just like press, just like radio and just like anything.

 I think the future of roadshows is going to be good. There are obviously going to be variations. You’ve seen that ZiFM came with trucks with LED screens so it might change just like how everything changes. I think roadshows will always be an important medium because people will then have the experience of interfacing with brands right there.