Your favourite brewer could be waging a dirty war against African Originals.
African Originals, a seven-year-old startup, accuses EABL of copying some of her products and sponsoring tweets purporting to be from customers complaining about health complications after using African Originals products.
In a letter to EABL, the company accuses the market giant of hiring Wowzi, a Nairobi-based digital marketing company with connections to top influencers, and alleges that this company was used to wage a war online in critical tweets to defame KO.
The company also accuses EABL employees of disparaging her products and encouraging supermarket employees not to display them.
“We are ready and willing to compete with EABL on merit through the quality and prices of our products but we are not prepared to suffer serious commercial harm as a result of their smear campaign,” African Originals chairman Henry Rudd wrote in the letter to Diageo’s general counsel in London.
EABL has since denied the allegations in a heavily worded statement.
"For clarity, EABL has no connection to African Originals products or their quality issues. These attempts to link EABL to these issues are baseless and cannot be authenticated, EABL is formally requesting African Originals retract their false allegations. EABL will vigorously defend its position and take all necessary steps to protect its reputation and the trust of our customers, consumers, and all other stakeholders."
EABL has in the past been accused of chasing rivals out of business.
In the 90s EABL had a bruising turf war with the South African brand Castle Brewery forcing the latter to close her multi-million factory at Thika leading to the loss of 800 jobs in 2002.