Case Study: Cutting Media Waste for a Retail Brand Across Tanzania

A retail chain came to us with a media plan inherited over four years of renewals. Nobody could explain why any single line item existed. This is the anonymised teardown of the audit and rebuild. Figures are withheld; the method is the point.

Step 1: map spend against footprint

We plotted every media placement against store locations. A third of outdoor spend was in corridors with no store within fifteen kilometres. National radio was buying reach in regions the brand had no presence in. This is the most common finding in Tanzanian media audits and it is almost always inherited, never intentional.

Step 2: separate brand money from footfall money

• ✦Brand budget: national radio and a small number of high-traffic billboards, held constant.
• ✦Footfall budget: digital and outdoor inside a defined radius of each store, flexed weekly.
• ✦Trade budget: in-store, promoters and catchment activations, owned by the regional managers.

Step 3: renegotiate, don't just reduce

Direct relationships with media owners, annual commitments rather than spot buys, and bonus weight negotiated into the contract rather than discount alone. Buying better is usually worth more than buying less.

Step 4: reporting people actually read

One page a month: spend by market, reach delivered, footfall proxy, and the three decisions being made next month. Dashboards nobody opens are not measurement.

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