Brands, managers tasked to re-invent or risk patronages

Brands and brand managers must continue to re-invent themselves if they must continue to enjoy enduring patronage from today’s consumers. Such re-invention has to be tailored towards meeting the desired expectations of the consumers.

Yinka Adebayo, Group Executive Director of Omnicom Media Group- WeCA, made the statement in a keynote presentation at the second edition of MediaConsortium Conference and Awards (MCCA) held recently in Lagos.

Adebayo spoke on the theme: “Meeting the Brands/Consumers Expectation in a Challenging Economy”.

According to him, customers are looking to brands to come up with new things and trendy items, if it is not trendy one stands the risk of losing them which eventually impacts the brand negatively. For him, companies must constantly review their activities and give more attention to researching their consumers to be able to meet their needs.

“Today’s consumers are evolving and it behoves on brands and their managers to evolve with the consumers to be able to meet them at the middle,” Adebayo said.

Citing the telecom industry as an example, he said: “iPhone will continue to be a phone of value to consumers because of the need it is meeting. Hence, you wonder why no matter how expensive the phone brand may be, the makers still make a series of models which may appear insane that despite buying an iPhone 13 one may still want to buy an iPhone 14 or 15.”

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Differentiating between the marketing and selling concept, Adebayo described marketing is an action taken to bring attention to a business’s offerings; they can be physical goods for sale or services offered adding that, not all businesses need to market their goods and services the same way.

For the selling concept, he noted that this assumes that consumers are looking for aggressive sales and promotions from consumers. He pointed out that many times, marketing tactics driven by the selling concept are based on the company’s need to sell rather than consumers’ need to purchase. Some of the tactics used include clearance sales. “It may not be a needed purchase, but a consumer can be persuaded with strong marketing or advertising techniques,” he said.

“There is the need to constantly do research- so that you can produce brands that meet the desire of the people… You will have to constantly innovate in such a way that it will meet customers’ expectations.

“Often times they say customer is king and he is king for a reason. When people say the customer is always right, it is not oftentimes they are right- there are cases where the customer is wrong but, how dare you challenge them? Because they hold the money which you are looking for you value them in such a way that it makes sense” he said.

Speaking earlier, Adetunji Faleye, Co-Publisher, MediaConsortium said the conference provides a unique opportunity to explore the strategies, innovations and collaborations necessary to navigate the economic challenges.