In Nigeria’s competitive market, brand activations, which are changing from the rudimentary practice of street dancing to dynamic all forms of story telling, are increasingly becoming channels for consumer engagement. In addition to above-the-line campaigns, brand owners are embracing activations to deeply engage their audience.
Felix Eiremiokhae, CEO, Oracle Experience Limited, strongly believes that brand activation is the future, as he believes that more local and multinational brands are likely to embrace the practice to deepen their engagement with their consumers.
In the recent time, unaguably, some brands have gained deep market acceptance and built positive perception through the uses of consumer engagement marketing channels, such experiential events and advert campaigns.
For Oracle, Eiremiokhae says “we have moved away from dancing on the streets to seeing ourselves as storytellers, on how you can touch the people sixth sense, that is the emotive sense. That is the direction. That is why you discover that most agencies that are not into ideation would struggle as we progress in the industry because every brand wants to tell a story. Story that people can walk away and remember over a very long period of time, but how many agencies can tell a story through activation that is another story for another day.”
Market activation is about memorability and consumer engagement. Some of those activations in the recent time include the Star Bottle Tree – that was amazing. The record-breaking tree was made with a total of 8,000 star beer bottles. There was overwhelming attraction to the tall Star Bottle Tree by consumers and those who appreciate creativity.
Another memorable activation was the Gulder re-launched, Gulder Yacht, where several hundreds of Gulder cartons were used to build walkways. There was also Heineken Green Light Experience. All these were ground-breaking activations that left a good taste in the mouth of Nigerians, consumers and brand owners, which of course have gone global in terms of clientels. Fortunately, all these activations were performed by Oracle.
Eiremiokhae, who is excited about his creations, says he is “always excited about all the works that we have done because the vibe and originality that go into each of them are all unique in their own sense. So, all of them represent different things. If you look at Heineken Green Light Experience, the concept and ideation are totally different from the Star Bottle Tree. The concept of Gulder Yacht was equally very different from that of Gulder relaunch despite the fact that it is the same brand. We create to fit every experience.”
However, he believes that the Star bottle tree excited the consumers more “because from the Star Bottle Tree we have to break the world record and build a Christmas tree from the Star Bottle to the level of 36 feet. For us, that was quite amazing and it got some international recognitions, one of which is creating a new record in the Guinness Book of Record as the tallest Christmas bottle tree in the continent. It was broadcast all over the world too.”
The CEO links source of his creativity to the grace of God because “when you are under the grace anything you set your mind to do you have the enablement to achieve it. However, we try as a business to see ourselves as people who are driving the creativity process for the industry. We take a lot of learning from how things are done globally, we try to expose ourselves through training and retraining and that has cost us so much, and most time we try to think outside the box because that is the only thing that can keep you a step ahead in the industry’s competition.
“Moreover, this is possible because we enjoy the story we tell; so for every opportunity we have been given we just want to tell those stories that can really make a brand feel that this is who we are and what we represent.”
Assessing some of the challenges in executing ground-breaking activations in the industry, Eiremiokhae, whose agency has been in operation for nine years, says life itself is a huge challenge but what separates you from others and make you outstanding is how you are able to manage these challenges when they come your way.
“I keep telling people they need to take risk for them to be able to stand out. The biggest challenge we keep seeing in the industry is ourselves. We keep doing things that had never been done in the industry and that is a huge challenge for us because you are required by clients to surpass your previous feats. So, it is already difficult for people to understand the direction we want to go.
“What we do here at Oracle is like a painter who has all the ideas but those ideas are inside of him. Therefore, trying to reinterpret those ideas sometimes could be really challenging. But the good thing is that clients are always patient with us and give us the opportunity to express our inner thoughts, and that makes it easy for us. Again, looking at our environment you discover that sometimes budget can also be a very big issue. Besides that, manpower and third-party supplier are huge challenges an agency like ours could face in delivering on these innovative brand engagement activations, but somehow here we are the clients are happy with us despite the challenges and they are always ready to stay in a journey with us,” he says.
Oracle has won several awards including the Marketing Edge award. The CEO says the awards have further challenged the staff.
It is expected that more brands would increasingly embrace product activations using creative strategies and ideas to tap into consumers’ passions. Experts say using activation strategies can lead to the consumer starting to believe in the brand and what it stands for, which is a closer step in the path to purchase.
Daniel Obi
