MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

A brand new world, the rise of Millennials There’s one recurring obsession that keeps haunting almost every marketing and ad agency executive. It’s in nearly every Powerpoint deck and on every marketer’s mind… Millennials: that so documented and ubiquitous M Word! For many years, most marketers (and their agencies) relied on the same old recipe. Write a tagline. Make a TV spot. And plaster it everywhere you can, all in the name of “Integrated Marketing”. Brand awareness and reach were the only metrics that mattered. Problem is, the recipe started to turn sour. It wouldn’t stick anymore, especially with new demographics: The Young People (which we decided to call “Millennials” to make them even more mysterious and fascinating). Combined with the digital revolution, the rise of Millennials has become hell of a puzzle that many CEOs are still struggling to solve. As a result, Chief Marketing Officers are losing their jobs as sacrificial lambs for this corporate gap and thei...

Many management consulting firms and technology companies are creating advertising agencies, mostly through the acquisition of agencies that have capabilities in user experiences, digital marketing, design, web and mobile. In the past few years, management consulting firms are ramping up their creative expertise as they are expanding the traditional set of agencies competing for marketing dollars, challenging giants like WPP, Publicis and Omnicom . According to Ad Age magazine, 8 of the top-10, and indeed, all the top 3 ad agencies are not those legacy names that might visit your home nightly with their TV commercials. Instead, they are consultancies like Deloitte, Accenture, KPMG and PwC! Even McKinsey is slowly building an agency arm; and tech companies like Adobe, Oracle and Epsilon have added a service component in the form of an agency to their core product offering. While the holding companies have slowed down their M&A activity of yesteryear, the ...

This is hopefully the concluding part of last week’s piece on the Dangote brand. I had discussed some of the concerns of members of the public about the image of this brand. They presently perceive it as one which recklessly kills commuters, bystanders, drivers, and dwellers in areas the company operates and beyond. So I asked,  Is Dangote truly a killer brand? Interestingly, this doesn’t do justice to the wider reality on ground. The experience people have of Dangote brands, and how they perceive the master brand is overwhelming indeed. People have condemned the attitude of the killer drivers on their way to do groceries and have returned home later with Dangote sugar, salt, milk, juice, pasta, rice and tomato puree in their shopping bags.  Obviously, the Dangote group keeps investing billions of naira in different sectors, to bring happiness to people, and you cannot but love the corporate brand: the efficiency of their problem-solving and need-satisfying sub...

The richest black man and Africa’s exceedingly rich man, multi-billionaire entrepreneur, Alhaji Aliko Dangote GCON, is a man to be admired for a myriad of reasons. He’s a trailblazer, pacesetter, conqueror, and achiever. His is an inspiring story. And despite the humongous wealth and intimidating achievement, he remains modest, meek and rather reserved. Dangote has turned packaging to a goldmine, and literally dug up gold from his quarries, just a fraction of the business. The man who struck gold in manufacturing, Oil & Gas and Cement production, has yet struck gold. This time, not he, but his employees; they struck Funke Gold, twice! According to reports, Funke Gold, a performing musician, was on her way to Ifo, Ogun State driving to honour a performance engagement when her car was hit by one of the now notorious Dangote trailers twice, and sent flying across the road like a ragdoll, definitely no match for a 40-ton 18-wheeler! In the car with Funke were memb...

Galaxy Note 7 The Samsung Galaxy Note 7, one of the most expensive and top tech in its category has been found with faulty batteries which cause them to emit smoke or catch fire; consequently, the South Korean tech giant is recalling over 2.5 million pieces of the phone already sold around the world. Samsung which had seen its profits jump by 14% on the success of its Galaxy S7, enjoying positive reviews with it, is now witnessing a share downturn on the recall of its Galaxy Note 7. That could mean $5b loss in projected revenue, and cutback on jobs. iPhone 7 With the imminent launch of iPhones in a matter of days, the Galaxy Note 7 brand image is expected to get a further bashing and inadvertently help shore up trust and preference for the Apple iPhone brand, its main competition. In an enormous operation in which it has first stopped production, Samsung has also stopped the sale of the famous phablet, will be replacing sold ones, and then proceed to do a heavy cri...