Kenyan socialite or "TV Girl" like many of you would like to call her, Grace Msalame, recently opened up about a fibroid removal surgery she underwent and which potentially saved her life.
In her post surgery blog post, Grace starts off by casually thanking the good Lord and extends her gratitude to the man for "being able to walk and drive". "My desire was to go back to business as usual so all I can do is thank God ?", she says. She then goes on and hits us with a blatant lie that her decision to write the blog post was inspired by her doctor. "My Doctor asked me why I haven’t blogged about my experience & I simply just wasn’t ready but this may help someone." says Msalame.
In the rest of the post she explains in detail the origin of her illness and the challenges she went through as she battled it.
What caught my eye, however, was the ending of the post where she goes on to endorse a bunch of Kenyan brands. In just a matter of seconds, she manages to turn the post from being about her illness, surgery and her road to full recovery to just another click baited marketing post. "PS: Of course I was fully repping in my favorite Kenyan Brand Vivo Activewear with matching handbag thanks to @jokajokleather because my late Paps always taught us “Buy Kenya, Jenga Kenya!” Hence why I’m the proud Vivo Brand Ambassador. #Grateful" To be fair to Msalame, this is something many Kenyan "influencers" as they like to call themselves, suffer from. They think brand pushing is simply tagging a bunch of social media accounts on every Instagram and Facebook post you make, and they go to unimaginable lengths just to find an opportunity to do it.
Msalame baited Kenyans who simply wanted to read her story on surgery and the challenges it brought forth but they ended up reading about clothing company Vivo Activewear (Which we have previously exposed on this site for hiring a toxic employee and refusing to suspend her despite numerous complaints from the public) and a certain handbag vendor.
This cheap trend needs to be brought to an end and maybe it's time our influencers went for benchmarking trips because they desperately need them. Bombarding us with your substandard social media posts about different brands isn't influencing us.