MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

KFC, yes, the one you know, has closed down hundreds of its outlets in the UK. And it is for no other reason than – don’t wait for it – chicken! Rather, and more accurately, the outlets are being shut down for the shortage of chicken, an integral item of the chicken-based offerings. This is unlike the reasons for having lately closed down some outlets in Nigeria. The UK problem only arose because KFC switched its Delivery Contract over to DHL, who’s had some teething problems delivering fresh chicken to all of the 900 KFC outlets; with some of the remainder outlets now having to close down, operate reduced hours or limited menu, more because KFC says “it would not compromise on quality”. On the lighter side, should we then resort to a name change to save the business? How about Kentucky Fried All? Or Kentucky Possibly Chicken? Or even Kentucky May-Not-Have Chicken? Or do we just say Kentucky Fried Choice, if only to keep the renowned KFC acronym. More seriously,...

Every advertising person has stories about how their agencies have blown new business pitches, often because someone said or did something stupid.  There is a classic story about an agency which pitched a car account but not one person showed up at the client’s office driving the client’s brand. There is another story of an agency pitching a watch account, but the Agency President showed up wearing a Rolex. I had to start drinking Stout though, first as Octagon Marathon Account Director for the Legend Extra Stout brand in 2001, and further as Chief Executive of a Guinness Nigeria-Retained Agency, R&B, in 2005. I would love to collect your stories if you can top the one that follows. I know quite a lot of them can be very funny, even in the telling.  When new business prospects come to visit a prospective agency, they can always sense and feel whether there is good chemistry among the agency participants. In many cases, even agency principals who do not ...

In his famous book The 4 Minute Work Week , author Tim Ferris introduces readers to Pareto’s law, also known as the 80/20 rule. The idea is that you can vastly improve your quality of life by focusing your energy on the 20% of activities that produce 80% of your desired outcomes. Conversely, says Ferris, you need to identify and eliminate the 20% of activities that take up 80% of your time. The goal is always to find and eliminate inefficiencies in order to give yourself more time to spend on high value activities. Let’s apply this to the office for a second. How often do you leave at the end of the day with an underwhelming sense of achievement because it took too long to find what you were looking for? The frustration of having wasted time trying to find information is one I’m sure you can relate to. If not, just ask someone in the Sales or Marketing team. I’m guessing you’ll find that people in Marketing spend a fair amount of time and energy creating brochures, data sh...

We’re living in an era of start-ups. Every other person is looking to start a new business and become an entrepreneur. But more than 80% businesses fail to survive their first 18 months. Nobody knows if your business will work or not; there is no formula or method which can help you find out that your idea has the potential to be a great business or not. However, there are certain factors that you need to check on, before you invest your time, money and energy into your idea. Here are some observations and necessary things you should keep in mind before starting a new venture. 1. Timing Out of many factors, including idea, funding and team, timing is the most important factor that you need to check. Great ideas have failed only because they started before time or they were too late. It’s the timing that decides your company's future. YouTube , for instance, was not the first video sharing platform. There were a few before that, but due to bad broadband penetration i...

Do you also subscribe to the notion that people under the age of 34 are immature, coddled, and self-obsessed? No, I don’t buy it. It is very okay to have a team of smart, socially-conscious, hard-working, and collaborative young people. Just don’t hire other types of people, regardless of age. Even though data show that Millennials are more likely to switch jobs than their Generation X colleagues, and that they’ll weigh flexible work schedules and work-life balance as heavily as they do salary, it still doesn’t strike as entitlement, though. Unprofessional deeds and immaturity strike more as the reasonable response to the world we live in. After Youth Service in 1991, I read job ads in newspapers, and circled interesting ones using a physical pen that actual ink came out of. I made phone calls on a phone that was connected to a wall. I had to stand next to the phone during these phone calls, due to cord length limitations. Sometimes people returned my calls and...

If you want a job you love, follow your biggest value for society, not your passion! I stumbled upon a TED Talk from a very inspiring young thought leader called Benjamin Todd who founded the non-profit career guidance organization 80,000 Hours (the  average number of working hours over a career). I'm still digesting his challenge of my long established belief that to have a fulfilling career you should find your deepest interests and follow your passion or calling. For many people interests and passions change over time and as a result they may not be the solid foundation that we perceive them to be. A much more sustainable anchor is finding where you can add most value to society over your lifetime. To note, this can be done in many different ways; for some this means joining a non-profit, for others it means joining the corporate world and contributing inside or on the side, for others it means starting companies...there are no shortage of problems and...

With a necessity to work with a wide variety of personalities and individuals with various job titles, it’s become important for agencies to whittle down not only how they can foster great relationships with their clients, but how clients can help improve it as well. When you’ve had great clients, some of whom have even become your close friends, here is a very concise list to help them get prepared to work with agencies like yours: 1. Be prepared to work So, you’ve hired an agency – and it wasn’t easy at all. Investing in an agency is a huge leap of faith that takes a lot of work. So much so, that sometimes once you’ve made the commitment, there’s a huge collective sigh of relief from you and your team. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the work is only getting started. If you want to succeed (and help them to help you), be prepared to invest your time. You are experts in your field and industry, and we are experts in marketing. We need to know everything we can about yo...