MARKETING COMMUNICATION DIGEST

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...

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...