Why businesses cannot afford to shout ‘Gena Mama’ anymore

IF YOU grew up in South Africa, you remember shop assistants standing outside calling to passersby — “Gena mama!

- Shamz Koya

SHOP assistants call out to passers-by in Victoria Street in Durban. The writer says businesses today are using AI. I geoffbrink. com

(I geoffbrink. com)

RS special” — pulling foot traffic through the door.It worked. Simple. Direct. Human. That was customer acquisition in the brick-and-mortar era.

Fast forward to 2026. Most business owners still do the equivalent - posting sporadically on social media, hoping someone sees it. But the streets are infinite now. Billions scrolling past. Your voice gets lost.

Businesses winning today aren’t shouting. They are using Al to find people who need what they sell, profile them, understand behaviour, and show up precisely where they are looking — before they even know they’re looking. This is the evolution from “Gena Mama” to AI automation. If you’re not making this shift, you’re invisible.

Most businesses post when they remember - twice a week, maybe once a month. Random pictures. Generic captions. “Check out our new product.”

Then they wait and hope someone sees it. Meanwhile, they are working 60to 70-hour weeks, manually responding to enquiries, forgetting to follow up and losing customers because they took a day to reply instead of minutes.

A medical practice in Johannesburg had posted only a handful of times in six months. When people googled their services, they were buried on page six while competitors ranked number one. They were losing significant monthly revenue to competitors with better systems.