As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to negatively impact the Nigerian economy, Chris Wulff-Caesar, marketing director, FrieslandCampina WAMCO, has called on Nigerian marketers to rise and steer their businesses out of the difficult moment triggered by the virus outbreak.
He made the call-to-action during a chief marketing officers tiered webinar themed ‘Marketing in a VUCA Environment’ organised by the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) recently.
Wulff-Caesar says the whole world, not just Nigeria, is now in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment and business leaders therefore have a responsibility to evolve with the tides and re-evaluate the ways of marketing to consumers whose lifestyles and habits are evolving rapidly.
He stated that there is a rapid changes attributed to peoples buying behaviour in locally made products, shopping within proximity and an almost absolute inclination to digital-first penchants.
“There is no gainsay that the pandemic has caused an enormous shift in the consumer lifestyle and the subsequent demand for the use of technology,” he said in a statement.
“When we continuously focus on the consumer in our businesses, we learn a lot more about what has changed, their new preferences This makes us more agile in our decision making to meet their demands”, Wulff-Caesar pointed out.
For marketers to be able to steer their businesses out of the storm, Wulff-Caesar enjoined them to study consumers buying patterns.
“Marketing and marketers must be like lighthouses that will guide consumers to the ports of our businesses; this in turn navigates businesses out of the storms caused by this pandemic,” he said.
“Navigate our own issues, face reality and not back away, be guided by your business purpose, make your business to be commercially agile and operationally shrewd and use the 6Es – Empathize; Educate; Encourage; Entertain; Everyone; and Evolve – to steer consumers to our businesses during extreme times,” he advised.
He stated that the public is becoming increasingly sophisticated owing to the kind of information they can easily access and this has resulted in tilting of the marketing landscape from a sender-driven to audience driven communication.
Chris Wulff-Caesar, barely a year ago, was selected as one of the jurors for the 2019 Cristal Award which was held in Marrakech – Morocco.
Prior to his appointment with FrieslandCampina WAMCO, Wulff-Caesar was marketing director, West Africa (Ghana and Nigeria) at ABInBev and member of the Board of Accra Brewery Ltd in Ghana.
