How have you been able to change the landscape of marketing in Nigeria?
Over time, I have initiated, preached and proliferated the gospel of “Brand-Consumer community relationship building” as a tool for effective brand marketing, bearing in mind the popular dictum, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. Lasting brand loyalty is built by establishing endless connections with consumers. That is the overarching philosophy which drove the way I set up and rolled out Hubmart’s marketing efforts at startup and till today. Remember the Hollywood comedy movie – Barbershop? It showed consumers becoming one family with the salon, sharing gossips, solving issues for the shop and their immediate neighbourhood. This is fiction, but it also demonstrated a very important lesson in marketing in today’s harsh macroeconomic environment, “Be your customers’ neighbour”. This philosophy and message is rapidly gaining grounds amongst consumer-facing brands and across the marketing space.
What inspired you to go into marketing?
My professional journey began in 2004 when I joined KPMG, one of the big four advisory firms. While there, I had extensive hands-on experience managing projects in the private and public sectors in both advisory and execution support roles.
During my time at KPMG, I had an epiphany and realized that “full value in professional services” was not just about optimizing a business’ internal processes, finances and operational efficiencies to help deliver on the brand’s promises to customers”. More was required to complete the value chain. That more is the definition and articulation of what that promise to the customer should be – and design of the road map for communicating the same to the customer”.
It was this search for the missing piece in the full value chain that drove me to broaden my scope and branch into marketing strategy, brand management and advertising.
Given the current weak economy that Nigeria is experiencing, is advertising still relevant?
A report compiled by Brian Wieser, of the WPP Company, estimates that global advertising (excluding U.S. political advertising) will end 2019 with 4.8 percent growth, down from 5.7 percent in 2018. Moreover, it predicts global advertising will decelerate further in 2020 and 2021, coming in at a pace of 3.9 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively. Growth is expected to range between 3 percent and 4 percent through 2024, according to the report.
This sluggishness he attributes to the weakening global economy. I stand by this insight but also dare say, this trend will apply to the Nigerian Advertising landscape, but to a lesser extent.
Advertising revenues will still grow at a significantly declining rate as a result of our current macroeconomic realities. However, brands will continue to strive to maintain market share, strive to capture more of consumers’ share of wallet. Consequently, advertising spend revenues will either inch up or hold steady. Brands will increasingly expect innovative utilization of available ad budgets implying more innovative advertising and marketing efforts going into 2020.
What are the challenges that marketers face?
In today’s world, our current south-trending macroeconomic environment is putting severe pressures on businesses and consumers concurrently. This has impacted sales for the businesses (via consumers’ declining purchasing power and reduced disposable income) and consumer brand habits (as they now have to adopt belt-tightening posture to survive the harsh economic pressures. Customers are now increasingly seeking bargain opportunities, seeking out cheaper substitutes and reducing the rate of consumption of luxury items. For a marketer in this environment, Return on Investment (ROI) on marketing efforts becomes inelastic, consumer buying decisions will be more significantly influenced by Point of Sales (POS) activities when juxtaposed with advertising (ATL) activities. Like I tell people these days, “marketing is most effective on the consumers at the moment of choice”
What are the innovative tools needed to attract consumers in this weak economy?
Another mantra I preach these days, “Advertising is dead, long live product activation” I counsel brands to increasingly leverage POS activations and big seasonal events to drive consumer capture and brand purchase consideration. Black Friday sales, seasonal discounts are key examples of this. Another good tool brands should increasingly leverage is innovative product placement and tactical brand-in-use placements. I have even executed this pro bono for some of the brands I am close and friendly with personally on some of my productions. I am open to doing this for other brands pro bono as well, but on a case by case basis.
You recently floated your own production company; why did you decide to start it and how has it been so far?
I am a firm believer in the dictum, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
After what I consider an illustrious career in consulting, the often much talked about and elusive job contentment did not come, I moved on to Marketing and Advertising, which helped quiet the continual riot and uproar in my spirit about what value given to others was, but it didn’t do it for me. After a period of soul searching and pondering on my one great unfulfilled promise possibly the greatest promise I made to another person – I changed course and took the path which led me to my baby – Pandemonium pictures.
In June 2019, she was birthed. Immediately after, the company commenced pre-production on some movie and television projects. This was borne out of the need to rapidly fulfil that promise. Today we have Endless, Sting, Secrets reboot and are in pre-production for three other projects. We have set up our independent ad-Backed broadcast platform while partnering with another content streaming service – Moove TV. It’s seemingly the best course of action I took in my life. It has been rewarding, satisfying, peace-giving (especially seeing that it has helped me honour that my promise to some extent) and has made work a perpetual vacation for me – of course, film making has loads of ups and downs but on the balance of things, I am vexed with myself for not taking this walk earlier in my life.
Tell us about the promise you made to your father?
“Footprints in the Sand”. That summarises it. I have had a very interesting life, so has my father (God rest his soul). We had the fun times – a few, and walked through hell a lot – this we did together. I lost my beloved mum who died at just 36, lost two younger ones, and fought a lot of battles – health and otherwise. As we came out of the high waters of life to catch our breath, my beloved father (I chose to always refer to him in the present tense – even though he passed on at the young age of 59, he forever lives on for me till date), kept asking one favour of me insistently – “make an impact, touch lives, don’t talk change, be change”.
He kept saying a great man leaves people awed in his presence, but a legend leaves generations celebrating his legacy. He shaped my view of reality. Our mortal lives and our concept of time are transient. A dot in the context of eternity. Greatness lasts for a lifetime, but legends span eternity. Making movies, shaping stereotypes and narratives seem to be my tiny step in the direction of fulfilling that promise to my dad. This is why I started tackling topical matters in my productions – Domestic Violence (Endless); Surrogacy (Sting), more on the way
