ZoomIn On Sebastian Wafula (Trinc Media)

The Media Industry has turned out to be one of the most disrupted industries of our time.Thanks to the Internet growth and penetration in the last decade, the traditional Media is slowly being swept away, ushering in a new era of digital media.

We decided to catch up with co-founder and Director of Trinc Media Sebastian Wafula; who combines skills as a Director, an advocate for youth empowerment and a mentor of young entrepreneurs.

Trinc Media Ltd operates as a full-service digital agency that specializes in web design, social media strategy, and digital campaign execution.

A subsidiary of Radio Africa Limited, the company uses web, mobile, and social media to drive their client’s agenda electronically to their existing and potential customers. It caters to corporate clients, SMEs, and public figures.

Learn more about Wafula as a leading entrepreneur in the media industry as we ZoomIn on his life and his journey in the Kenyan media industry.

Who is Sebastian Wafula?

I am the Co-founder and Director of  Trinc Media, a social media startup that we grew from a three-man team into a full-servicae digital agency with presence in five countries across East Africa.

in 2013, we sold the talent management segment of the business to Radio Africa Group to focus on developing our regional agency operations, which we later integrated into the OMD – Omnicom Network.

I am now an advocate for youth empowerment in Africa. My focus is on developing skills — as a faculty member at The International School of Advertising as well as mentoring upcoming entrepreneurs, both as an advisor to The Safaricom Spark Fund, and as the special projects lead at The Wafula Corporation.

“In show business, not everything is as it seems. There are some scary skeletons under all that glam and hype.”

As an entrepreneur, how did you narrow in on that one thing you wanted to do?

There is a time and season for everything. Trinc Media, unlike some of my other business ventures, came at the right time and was built with creativity and passion. The work was fun and we loved doing it until the wee hours of the morning!  That’s how you know that what you’re doing is your thing!!!

One lesson you can share from your experience as an entrepreneur.

“Never see yourself as an underdog. Your only as big as your vision allows you to be”

How do you see co-working spaces helping you succeed?

My attitude has always been business unusual. I heavily leverage on technology and relationships to scale my businesses! Co-working spaces come fully-fitted with both enabling you to deliver big on the outside but remain lean, agile and efficient on the inside.

Why Nairobi Garage?

Apple started in a garage, Google started in a garage. Being at Nairobi Garage keeps me focused and connected to the right mix of members to pilot and validate some of the products and services we will be rolling out as The Wafula Corporation.

How would you say you got to be the guru of marketing, media and advertising?

In today’s information age technology is evolving at a neck-breaking pace. My partners and I started Trinc Media at a time when corporate companies like Samsung, Safaricom and Coca-Cola were looking to tap into the power of social media platforms to reach out to and connect with consumers. Being a trained computer engineer, I knew how the technical bit works, but working with these companies challenged us to leverage new technology to market products and services. Fast forward 6 years and I now teach digital marketing courses at the International School of Advertising. So the journey has been a very practical one with a very steep learning curve.

Was it the show biz that taught you about marketing?

Having worked for MoSound Events and Radio Africa Group I got fully immersed into the world of show business and got a good understanding how famous people not only become famous but stay famous. My biggest learning from these experiences is that Marketing, Brand Perception and PR are very critical ingredients in show business. So it is safe to conclude that your favourite celebrity, when critically analyzed, can teach you a thing or two about marketing.

Where do you see the world of marketing going? What will change in the next 5-10 years?

Neil Turok once said that “We are analog beings, living in a digital world, facing a quantum future”. Marketing continues to evolve everyday with disruptive startups, like AirBnB, constantly threatening well-established legacy businesses. Throw in Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality and you get a whole new consumer experience. The fundamentals of marketing will remain the same but the tools and techniques practiced today will be obsolete in the next 10 years thanks to modern technologies.

Marketing and media today demands an elevated level of creativity, where does your creativity spark from?

From my experience I can tell you that its the simple things in life that bring out the creative spark in marketing campaings. When you listen to your customers and analyze their needs you will discover that the most creative marketing campaign usually presents itself as the simplest and most obvious approach to solving the problem. All you have to do is listen and then think a little!

What do you think is the value of marketing for small business today? How have you seen the value from your experience with other small businesses?

Marketing is the process of building a profitable relationship between any business and its customers. It is therefore an essential ingredient in any small or big business. If you want people to buy your product or services, you need to tell them about it. The process of telling them is marketing. The real challenge then is the becomes how creative can one get with the message that they want to share with the world.

What was the most challenging time for Trinc? What was the most rewarding?

The most challenging time for Trinc came in 2013 when we divested a part of the business to Radio Africa Group. The business relationship didn’t quite work out as we had hoped and I ended up getting fired and had to start from scratch. Little did I know that this mistep was the starting point for the most rewarding time for the business. We knew what to focus on, rebuilt the business from scratch and completely divested in 2017 with a decent portfolio of corporate clients.

One entrepreneur you look up to?

I really admire the late Steve Jobs. Life served him lemons and he made a glass of lemonade that tuned into the biggest company in the world. One of the quotes he borrowed from Rob Siltanen says that “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”. This is very inspiring especially when every dealing with the fact that as an entrepreneur your passion and conviction will, often, be misunderstood by many.

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