Former FCMB staff Kalu spearheads value creation consulting in Nigeria, Tanzania

Ikechukwu Kalu, who just joined Customer Passion Point Limited, after a successful work at First City Monument Bank Limited, says “value creation is the way to go if we must help growing businesses set up properly and operate profitably.”

Interestingly, Kalu had ventured into this new and evolving area of consulting while he was sojourning in Tanzania. He and his wife Chinwe set up Customer Passion Point Limited in Tanzania in 2011, and within few months started making waves. They competed and won the brief to develop and implement a Promotional Campaign for Ecobank, Tanzania.

“We worked with the team to develop and manage (end-to-end) a six-month sales promotion to drive quality awareness, growth in customer acquisition run rate and massive drive for low cost deposits. The campaign which was supported by a robust promotional mix including advertising (Radio, TV, Outdoor and Print), PR (pre, during and post), Social Media and Experiential customer engagements (road shows, event draws etc) was effectively and efficiently executed, evaluated and properly closed at the end of the six months. Little did we know that the bank will replicate same concept in Nigeria and other markets within same period, thus attesting to the veracity of the concept,” he said.

“Another example worthy of mention is the work we did with Benchmark Productions, the owners of Bongos Star Search (a musical talent show similar to project fame), and the leading musical reality show in Tanzania. This brand asset was in its 5th year in during which monotony had set in with negative impact on its equity. We worked with the team to repackage the asset to widen its appeal to youth brands in Tanzania and position them well enough to attract premium brands as sponsors,” he said.

Kalu’s passion comes through as he talks about Customer Passion Point: “We work with our clients to understand the specific needs they have and we provide appropriate solutions and follow through to ensure success is achieved and learning documented. Our goal is to provide practical solutions that are tailored to the need of our clients and stay with them through implementation. We are only satisfied when our client is making good progress, when every investment made creates value for their stake holders.”

He explained further “we believe our customers should not call us again for the same problem. So we help our customers build the required capacity to enable them deal permanently with identified issues. We are committed to building capacity to enable growing businesses understand and leverage the passion points of their customers to create value. That is why we focus on value creation which is expressed through – Marketing Advisory Services, Training and Development, and Management of Brand Assets/Value Added Services.

“Central to what we do at Customer Passion Point Limited is understanding customer needs and working closely with them to develop solutions and interventions that are specific and appropriate to solve the core issues from the insights developed. Insight has been defined as a deep routed need that a consumer has which if met will unlock huge opportunities for businesses. We believe that if insights are properly identified and understood, the job of crafting strategy and assigning resources becomes easy.”