South Africa, Dec. 8 -- It is the group chat. It is the newsfeed. It is the marketplace. It is the customer-care desk and on some days, it is the entire internet.

With South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria all sitting comfortably at 95%+ penetration, WhatsApp is not where people go it is where people live. So, when brands ask me, "Should we be on WhatsApp?" I usually ask a better question:

"Why on earth aren't you already?"

For years, brands treated WhatsApp like a digital switchboard. Press-1-for-this. Press-2-for-that. A sterile call centre with emojis tacked on for 'flair'. Africa has evolved. Our audiences have evolved. But brand behaviour has not kept up.

We do not build for African behaviour. We copy global templates and paste them on...