All except for the Advertising industry. Adverts simply plonked a local looking model in a canned western concept and… abra cadabra! One man saw the gap and surged into it.

In 2004, Mpho Balopi walked out of his plush accounting job and into an office the size of a ping pong table. The vision was to position the agency as an agent of bona fide “tswananess”. So clearly, the agency’s name had to play a mammoth role. Mpho stumbled upon William Bernabech’s quote “Nobody counts the number of ads you ran; they just remember the impression you made”. The word ‘impression’ switched a light. Now to look for a word that unashamedly and defiantly stood for all things African and Original. How about the cheeky ‘Native?’ (Eureka). Native Impressions was born.

Native Impressions got a shot at lasting first impressions pitching for the nation’s Motor Vehicle Accident Fund (MVA). Against the tirade of bigger internationally aligned agencies, Mpho stood alone with the help of an old research friend and won. The ‘natives’ had landed. Shortly after, Native detected another trend – all advertising pictures had to have people in them by default. So the agency cherry picked the much known but less publicized Botswana Building Society and brainstormed. The result was Botswana’s first major homegrown abstract advertising campaign. One outstanding visual depicted a mother duck with her little ducklings in a row captioned ‘Follow the leader’. Many Batswana were instantly taken back to their good old kindergarten and nursery years and the high pitched singing of the popular ‘Follow the leader’ nursery hymn. In a country with no advertising awards, the campaign received unabashed praise from BBS’ CEO in the annual report. Several radio phone-in sessions buttressed the glowing feedback.

The Natives then turned their attention to turn around times. The jokes about ‘African Time’ and the all too familiar ‘there is no hurry in Africa’, were as would be expected, true about the local advertising industry. It was at this time that one of the commercial banks SOS’d with just twenty four hours to deadline. They needed t-shirts, golf shirts, caps, bags and many more branded goodies. Their agency had dropped the ball just before kick-off. Native gladly obliged. Printing houses and embroiderers were queued in as far as Jo’burg. The printing presses huffed and puffed all night. Drivers drove through the night, past the border and into Gaborone. The client’s order was delivered at 0730hrs the next morning thirty minutes before tee off time. The client beamed.

With every passing year big brands took notice. Some took a swig of the Native brew. The calls came in. The pitches poured in. The agency won the country’s largest investment promotion agency, Botswana Export and Development Investment Agency (BEDIA) account. Shortly after Native landed the nation’s premier business-to-business expo, Global Expo Botswana as testimony to its increasing reputation amongst the hard nosed corporates. It has successfully held both accounts for the past three years.

Most agencies will hire only after winning accounts but, self-believing Native did the reverse. Mpho Balopi, always on the search for talent that would catapult the agency beyond their peers, hired talent and shored up the numbers. Within a few months later, Native pitched for the largest life insurer, Botswana Life Insurance and triumphed. Work for the client began right away due to the agency’s added capacity.

Mpho Balopi then turned his enterprising eye to the outdoor advertising sector. None of the outdoor companies were locally owned. Resultantly, tailor made outdoor solutions were lacking. In what had become his signature style, Mpho launched headlong and spawned Native Outdoor.

Riding on the ample coat tails of the popular national parliamentary and council elections, Native Outdoor built and flighted over eighty billboards in all fifty seven constituencies.   Today the group owns a photo studio, an interior décor firm and has vested interests in the property market all under one roof. The roof houses a fortyplus strong staff. In a country whose total population is only 1, 8 million, these numbers stand tall.   Dear reader you will attest that all things indigenous are stereotypically viewed as sub standard (‘This is Africa my friend, don’t raise your hopes too high’ kind of talk). Native intends to buck the skeptics. Native Impressions is therefore launching an upgraded, premium brand look that is miles apart from shabby chic. Its premium. The new face is the harbinger of a distilled and skilled team intent on effective and measurable advertising that contributes meaningfully to the clients bottom-line, while garnering enough international brand clout.