Find Advertising, Marketing and PR expertise in Sierra Leone

Historically, marketing, advertising and PR have principally serviced the diamond industry, Sierra Leone’s most lucrative export. This work tends to be done in house by major traders although specialist international companies such as Overseas Diamonds NV have sometimes been used. Outside this there has been little development of the professions although schemes run by NGOs and other local development programmes identify marketing as a key element in national economical development.

The International Labour Organisation set up the Kafoima Youth Development Organization (KAYDO) to encourage the youth of the region not to leave rural Sierra Leone to seek work in its urban centres. This was partly done through a production and marketing centre which engaged in small-scale manufacturing and trade both locally and internationally over the internet.

The marketing, advertising and PR industries are in their infancy in Sierra Leone thus the country scores low in comparison to others around the globe. In extent of marketing which scores countries on a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 means that very little use is made of sophisticated marketing tools and techniques and 7 that much use is made of these techniques, Sierra Leone scores 2.5. This places it in 139^th place out of 144 countries worldwide. This low ranking is reflected in its position for buyer sophistication where it comes 134^th with a score of 2.3. This is well below the world mean of 3.1 and indicates that buyers in Sierra Leone make decisions based more on lowest price than on a sophisticated analysis of performance attributes.

The small industry is reflected in the narrow scope of advertising media available in Sierra Leone. The broadcast media industry is small and centred around major urban centres.

Print media remains popular for companies and private individuals both in hard copy and on the online version of the paper. Sierra Leone lead the printing industry in Africa in the 19^th century with the first modern printing press in the continent.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, social media still only reaches a small percentage of the population, around 1.4% in 2012, around 70, 000 users in real terms. There is some sign of growth however as this figure rose by 17, 500 in the last six months of 2012.