By Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK
City Drop, the capital’s first business-to-business marketing and promotions ‘knock and drop’ service, is expected to be launched today.
The initiative that targets Windhoek’s prolific SME market and the broader community will provide a creative and exciting vehicle to communicate with the relevant corporate world.
To bring the project to fruition, City Drop partnered with the already existing charity organisation ‘Men on the Side of the Road’ (MSR) whose mission is to assist in creating employment opportunities within the communities they operate.
City Drop will be providing approximately 35 new jobs, all of which come from a database of 800 job-seekers in Windhoek. The team will hit the CBD as from May 20, 2008, with their first job the ‘Business Digest’, Namibia’s largest (10 000 copies) business-to-business publication.
“After an incredibly successful entrance into the market in late 2007, we simply recognised an extraordinary opportunity, mostly because the success of the Business Digest forced us to think outside the box, in terms of ensuring that the publication will reach the target directly, thus improving the advertising impact,” Amos, one of the directors of City Drop explained,
Amos said: “With the Business Digest being City Drop’s first long term contract, we are delighted to work through a structured organisation, which protects the unemployed and pays a noticeable amount above minimum wage.”
Janet Wicks, head of MSR, said: “We are extremely delighted with this partnership, as it allows us to enter new avenues in terms of job creation, especially with the prospect of broadening our scope of employment.”
City Drop’s first round of deliveries will encompass the major business areas of Windhoek, including the Southern Industrial, Prosperita, some of the Windhoek West business area, the CBD and all the city malls and business centres in the suburbs.
“We simply recognised the opportunity and identified that there are limited channels available to communicate directly with business, especially with the highly lucrative and developing SME market as well as the corporate sector,” Gareth Amos pointed out.
He added that the vision is to have all businesses of all sizes recognise City Drop as a new and exceedingly effective channel for delivering highly targeted marketing and specialised communication messages directly to the business community in general.
“We have also planned to keep the same team employed by City Drop in an effort to gradually groom the trainees to be team leaders in terms of managing, co-ordinating and monitoring the drops,” he said.
Another aim for the future is to eventually extend City Drop to regions throughout Namibia, simultaneously helping to extend the MSR project, Jacques de Witt, also a director of City Drop, explained.
Distinctly noticeable by their uniforms of red and black and a distinctive brand and logo, the City Drop team will be available to carry out city ‘drops’ for businesses wishing to get their message directly into the hands of the business community, from June onwards, he said.