MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

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...

By now, Nigerians should have heard quite enough about the Chibok Girls series; from demonstrations and counter-demonstrations; to their innocence and their defilement; and to the rescue and the next cue. And now, the Lai Mohammed cameo. After quite a while of being incommunicado on sundry national issues, Alhaji Mohammed has come out to try explaining away the ‘strategy’ of government towards rescuing the famed Chibok girls from the clutches of their abductors, deep in the Sambisa forest, or wherever else they might eventually be reported or discovered to have been kept. I think it is quite unfair that the Information Minister will come out and dish Intelligence of how the Federal Government had attempted, and now intends to rescue the girls, including the misdirected, and perhaps the disjointed moves at negotiating their freedom. With no prejudice to the gains of this government on the war against insurgency, I think the particular episode of the Chibok Girls’ re...

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...