On the afternoon of Friday the 18th of September 2026, the Strathmore Marketing and Communication Excellence Hub, known as SMaCE, put a question to a room at Strathmore Business School full of the people who actually commission, conduct and act on consumer research in Kenya: Can synthetic consumers replace real

A year ago, prompting AI well was a marketing advantage. Not anymore. It’s now just the basics — the starting point, not the edge. Two things moved the goalposts. First, AI is becoming a collaborator, not a tool. The newest tools don’t just answer — they chain tasks together, plan,

I had planned to record one podcast with Tito Alai. We ended up recording three. By the end of our first Pure Digital Passion Podcast session, we had travelled from his early childhood in Kirinyaga and Muhoroni through boarding school, Lenana School, the University of Nairobi and an extraordinary rise