Alex Tutu Muiruri
Kenyan marketer Alex Tutu Muiruri, 32, has redrawn the region’s advertising skyline by turning lamp-posts, billboards, and bus shelters into data-rich storytelling canvases. A tourism graduate of USIU-Africa who cut his teeth selling airport display space, he now runs Dentsu’s Sub-Saharan Africa operations, steering a nine-country network that fuses creativity with geospatial analytics to reach commuters within metres of their next purchase decision. His signature projects include the “Malaria No More” takeover, a sensor-lit, real-time alert system that pulsed prevention messages across outdoor screens and went on to win at the Loeries Awards in South Africa, plus first-of-their-kind 3-D anamorphic billboards that doubled brand recall for FMCG clients.
Muiruri leads with the Ubuntu creed “we are because of others,” pairing every campaign with an impact metric: mosquito nets distributed, trees planted, classrooms wired. Under his watch Dentsu has launched a pan-African out-of-home dashboard that lets marketers track impressions as precisely as clicks, cutting wastage by up to 25 percent. Next on his horizon are AI-generated dynamic ads that change with traffic flow and a talent-exchange programme to seed advanced media skills in Nairobi, Lagos, and Accra. His goal is clear: prove that high-tech, high-impact advertising can flourish and lift communities in Africa’s open air.