MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

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...

For years now I have been spouting off about the wrong-headedness of online ‘precision targeting’ versus mass media. Big brands need big reach, not the diminishing returns of finer and finer targeting. Facebook needs to forget about ‘precision targeting’. It's just not working. Rather, they need to sell reach. One of the great benefits of the mass media is that it lacks precision targeting. It reaches all the users in your category, including the users of your competitor's brand. Have you ever wondered how McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nike, Toyota and Apple, and all the other enormous worldwide brands became successful?  For one thing, these brands were sloppy; they had to be. They didn't have big data or ‘precision targeting’. They couldn't punch a key and immediately identify ‘left-handed Anglican drycleaners who rode tokunbo cars’. So they had to use the mass media and talk to ‘everyone’. Not only did they not suffer for it, they prosper...

The most recent in world memory and arguably the most talked about of speech gaffs in recent times was that of Melania, wife to the erudite US Republican Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, whose speech mirrored a 2008 copy of Michelle Obama’s. Fast forward two months later and half the world away in our own dear native land is our own dear President Muhammadu Buhari, entangled in a similar web of stolen speech. Stealing is not corruption, we were told by Nigeria’s immediate past president. PMB and his aides had spent some of last year and all of this year trying to convince Nigerians and the world that stealing is indeed corruption; and I agree absolutely. But of course, speeches, when stolen, must also be categorised accordingly, especially when it is by the man who heads a regime with anti-corruption crusade as the cornerstone of its rejuvenation policy. So how did this come about? Apparently the change didn’t begin with the President and the Presidency at...

Publicity and Public Relations are often wrongfully considered one and the same. But in fact, Publicity is just one aspect of Public Relations. Publicity   concerns a company, organization or individual’s presence in the media. And forms of Publicity include news stories, articles and event information. Publicity creates public awareness and attention around a brand, and publicists gain publicity for their clients by   promoting them. Unlike Public Relations, Publicity is used solely to attract attention. It differs from Public Relations in the sense that PR focuses on more than just public attention. The intent in Public Relations is to accomplish an organization’s stated goals by sending strategic messages to the appropriate audiences in the hope of impacting their knowledge, behaviours or attitudes. In short, PR manages the overall reputation of the client while simultaneously building relationships among all of those who are affected by it. As a manageme...