Building a brand, fostering engagement, occupying new spaces for visibility, and better leveraging audiences: between April and June 2026, various initiatives across Africa demonstrated that marketing and advertising practices are evolving. Comms & Marketing Africa examines these changes and their implications for industry professionals.
For a long time, marketing strategies were designed around a simple objective: raising awareness of and selling a product or service. However, competition between brands and the proliferation of communication channels now compel companies to place greater emphasis on their identity.
This shift was a key focus of the 2026 Business to Brand Summit, which highlighted the need for African companies to build genuine brands rather than simply marketing their products. The distinction may seem subtle, but it transforms the way business is done. Today, a brand requires a recognizable positioning, a consistent identity, a compelling story, and a relationship with its audiences. The product remains important, of course, but it no longer constitutes the entirety of the brand’s narrative.
Major Events Become Spaces for Brand Activation
This drive for engagement also extends to strategies surrounding major events. In the run-up to the 2026 World Cup, Big Five Solutions developed a « World Cup Special » offering tailored to brands looking to boost their visibility and engagement around the tournament. Such initiatives demonstrate how an event can become a genuine platform for communication.
For a brand, it is no longer enough to simply purchase advertising space or publish visuals featuring the event’s branding. Brands must find ways to join the conversation whether through content, experiences, digital activations, partnerships, influencer collaborations, or on-the-ground campaigns. Major events thus become opportunities for brands to connect with communities that are already highly engaged.
Media Outlets Must Also Better Leverage Their Audiences
This transformation is reshaping the advertising market as well. In Cameroon, RFI Publicité has engaged with advertisers to showcase its audience figures, formats, and the opportunities available to brands. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, AG Partners RDC has become RFI’s exclusive sales representative for radio and digital advertising space, as well as sponsorship opportunities.
These initiatives highlight a significant shift: media outlets no longer simply sell advertising space; they must also be able to demonstrate the value of their audiences. For advertisers, knowing the number of people reached is often no longer enough. They want to know who makes up that audience, what content they consume, how they react, and the actual visibility a campaign can generate. The ability to document and measure this audience is therefore becoming a key selling point.
Digital technology multiplies possibilities but adds complexity to campaigns
Brands today have access to numerous touchpoints: television, radio, outdoor advertising, websites, social media, content creators, events, apps, and even e-commerce platforms. This proliferation offers more opportunities, but it also makes campaigns more complex to design. A single campaign might start with a video on TikTok or Instagram, be extended by a content creator, drive traffic to a digital platform, and conclude with a physical activation. The challenge for professionals, then, is to make these various channels work together effectively. A multi-channel campaign is not simply one that is broadcast everywhere; each channel must play a specific role and contribute to the same objective.
African brands are also seeking their own unique ways of communicating
Underlying these transformations is a crucial question: how can brands be built that truly resonate with African audiences? Consumers across the continent are exposed to major international brands, yet they are also developing their own points of reference, digital habits, languages, cultural codes, and expectations.
For professionals, this creates a space for innovation.
Campaigns can increasingly leverage local creators, national languages, cultural references, popular events, and issues specific to each market. It is not simply a matter of adapting an international campaign for Africa. In some cases, it involves building a campaign from the ground up, specifically designed for local realities.
What this means for professionals
These shifts are increasingly bringing various disciplines closer together: marketing, communications, advertising, digital, influencer marketing, events, content creation, and data. Professionals must therefore be capable of grasping multiple dimensions of a single campaign: brand positioning, audience expectations, content formats, distribution channels, and performance indicators. This does not mean that all these roles are becoming identical; rather, they must work together more closely.
A trend to watch
Initiatives observed between April and June 2026 reveal a gradual shift in African marketing: moving from a pursuit of visibility toward a pursuit of engagement and value. Brands want to be seen, but also recognized. Media outlets want to reach audiences, but also demonstrate their value. Events are becoming spaces for brand activation, while digital channels allow for a multiplication of touchpoints.
For industry professionals, the challenge will be to transform this proliferation of possibilities into coherent strategies. Key takeaway: in an environment where capturing attention is becoming increasingly difficult, the question is no longer just « how do we gain visibility? » but « how do we build a relationship that matters to both the audience and the brand? »
