There has been a lot of hullabaloo revolving around the Samsung ad that was at the top of the KICC. Opinion pieces, blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts had pretty much everyone commenting on it. In the end, the ad was taken down and the matter is in court. Just a note, the ad wasn’t put up by Samsung but by Alliance Media, a South African Company, that was drafted by the KICC management to put up the ad structure.
KICC is an acronym for Kenya International Conference Centre and gets most of its revenue from use of its conference facilities. An ad is just another way to raise funds to manage the place. A lot of Kenyans argue that KICC is an iconic building and having an ad on it is tantamount to defacing it. Defacing is a strong term. If you want to discuss defacing of KICC, think back to the Moi era when the building was run down. Now that’s the definition of defacing.
The iconic status I agree with. When you think of Nairobi, KICC is definitely one of the images that comes to mind, much like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Strangely enough, the Eiffel Tower has had ads run on it and KICC should be no different. There are those who will argue that that is a western philosophy and we Africans respect our monuments. Well, those monuments must be paid for and we need to be realistic about that. Also, KICC is a conference centre and not a museum. Others argue that if any advertising should be done on KICC, it should be open to only Kenyan brands. That’s absurd from a business point of view. That misses the point of it being well, an international centre.
Contrary to popular belief, KICC is not a National Monument (a building constructed in order to commemorate something of national importance) and so the argument that National Monuments shouldn’t have ads on them doesn’t really fly.
I don’t mind having Nairobi lit up with ads at night like say, New York. It could give the city the much needed revenue it needs to develop into a city of the future. If planned well, it really can look beautiful. To be honest, the only problem I had with the Samsung ad was that it wasn’t very good looking. Work on the aesthetics and put it right back up there.