Acceler8ed Marketing Services: Emerging 360 Degrees Marketing Communication Powerhouse

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Funsho Jacob, MD, Acceler8ed Marketing Services

By Jeremiah Agada

“I feel the need – the need for speed.” Peter “Maverick” Mitchell’s words in Top Gun in 1986 rang true for fighter pilots and race car drivers back then. In 2019, they are the mantra of our daily lives. Everything is getting faster. With social media and smartphones, communication is faster, more so transportation. Elon Musk is working on a new high speed transportation system which would take passengers from New York to D.C. in 29 minutes.

Marketing communication is no exception. The name of today’s marketing game is speed: speed to acquire top-of-funnel leads, speed to engage those leads after initial capture, speed to push them to sales when the time is right, etc. Every process, system or person that slows the organization is a barrier to marketing’s biggest goals: engage customers, build sales pipeline that converts to revenue.

Increasingly, professionals in the field are beginning to see the need in upping their speed or better said, “Marketing Acceleration”. “Marketing Acceleration” is the ability to sense opportunities for customer engagement paired with the agility to meet customers where they are, all while optimizing for maximum speed and efficiency. Beyond a buzzword, the goal of marketing acceleration is achieving faster and more efficient connections with customers.

Perhaps, this is what Funsho Jacob, a suave consummate marketing professional with a decade cognate experience in marketing communications management, brand equity building, strategy formulation and implementation, realised Clients need when he floated Acceler8ed Marketing Services – AMS for short, in 2017.

Positioned as an agency for the future, Accele8ed Marketing Services has been among agencies that are silently disrupting the IMC landscape with efficiency, speed and measureable deliverables. With core competences in Experiential marketing, Retail merchandising/merchandising and Digital Marketing, the agency has executed briefs for local and multinational Clients that belies its size as well as its relatively young age.

Having worked with one of the biggest Multinational FMCG giants, PZ Cussons, he must have realised that reaching the target audience quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently is what many Clients seldom get from their agencies, hence he opened shop.

With a very nimble and efficient team from a pool of well trained and highly experienced field marketing managers – a cumulative work experience of 67 years in the marketing communications industry, Acceler8ed Marketing Services, AMS has made huge investments in field marketing with infrastructure in key urban centres, setting enviable track record in helping to build global brands locally as well as projecting local brands globally.

One of the challenges that marketing and sales professionals face daily is finding the best ways to achieve faster customer connections and make them feel the brand is less like a company selling products and more like a fellow customer themselves. This is why the AMS proposition is based on this understanding as well as others and has helped brands to execute innovative solutions to overcome these challenges in recent years.

With values and operational philosophies tailored along virtues of a sense of urgency, commitment to continuous improvement, integrity, transparency as well as accountability, the agency is reputed for delivering solutions that leverage insights that drive consumer and trade passions and behaviour as well as delivering end-to-end solutions that add value, accelerate business growth and ultimately impact profitability positively.

The Agency has achieved so much by leveraging on the innovative Field Reporting – FReD technology Support. FReD is a web based Field marketing reporting and campaign monitoring tool customized to meet all program requirements. It delivers real time reports with drill down capabilities.

Other functions of this technology includes, giving customized reports of the activities of the day, creates precise forms territory-wise, to make the job easy for the sales rep visiting that area, acts as a Scheduler- giving automated reports on demand, creates new hierarchy of reporting of sales reps to managers and helps territory managers access the dashboard and take the accountability of work in their area.

In addition, the Agency prides itself in executing briefs for Clients using customer intelligence and market research, knowledge and best practices, digital design and production, creative design, strategy, brand development, field trade marketing logistics, production and procurement.

In the relatively short time it has operated in the industry, AMS is known to have developed other competences and executed campaigns and activations that belies its barely three-year sojourn in the Nigerian market.

As a versatile Agency, AMS core competence is in Experiential Marketing-brand experiential activations, product launch, internal and external engagement, event management. In one of the experiential campaigns it carried out for Haier Thermocool, a leading White Goods manufacturer in Nigeria with widespread distribution across the country, it helped the brand engage its customers with the National Raffle Draw. Reaching an impressive over 200,000+ customers within 10 weeks of activation, the Agency successfully ran 3 raffle draws- 2 regional draws and 1 National draw.

Yet another brief it cracked for another of its client, Nigerian Breweries, is an In-bar activation wherein the agency working hand in hand with the Client activated bars in Lagos during festive periods to celebrate the festivities with loyal consumers. Activating 18 outlets, the Agency reached an approximate 5,000 consumers, rewarding 180 consumers based on their loyalty and their luck in being picked in the Lucky Dip.

Skilled in Promotional Marketing also, the Agency organised the So Klin Display and Win Contest for the So Klin brand. So Klin, one of the leading washing detergent powder in Nigeria planned to drive visibility with an engaging and impactful Display & Win Contest in Trade and they had 30 markets in 25 cities targeted to be activated in 6 months. Acceler8ed Marketing took up the challenge and efficiently executed it. It engaged over 300 retail auditors for visibility drive, reached 10,000 retailers and over 300,000 shoppers and recorded major wins through aggressive Display & Win contest in 30 key open markets.

For yet another brand under, the Agency created a result-oriented visibility activity. Good Mama, a mid-tier washing detergent powder brand relaunched its packaging and wanted to engage retailers pan-Nigeria. The Agency went to work on this, getting 20 markets activated, over 10,000 cases sold and engaging an estimated 6,000 retailers and over 100,000 consumers.

Similarly, Mamador, a premium seasoning brand was recently launched and there was a need to activate neighbourhoods in key markets. In six weeks of activation in Ibadan, Benin and Warri, the brand reached 100,000 Households, delivering a minimum of 60% conversion rate through D2C sales!

When Ovaltine wanted to launch its new 800g refillable pack in key cities in South-West and South East, it did that through AMS. The result is that Lagos, Ibadan, Onitsha & Benin recorded over 8,000 cases sold with 70% conversion achieved. Approximately 5,000 retailers were also reached.

Asides product launch and activations, the Agency has also carved a name in the retail marketing and merchandising niche. Whether it is POS development and deployment, merchandising, outlet visual branding-concept to execution or retail redistribution, Acceler8ed Marketing Services is fast becoming the go-to Agency for that.

For the Heineken brand, the Agency did a high-end branding of the Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos. This is in line with the brand’s drive to refresh branding in high value bars pan Nigeria. The result of that exercise is a complete turnkey renovation and rebranding of the 80-seater bar.

If you have been to the National Theatre in Iganmu in recent times specifically Abe-Igi arena, you will be impressed with the outlet branding for Nigeria Breweries’ Star Lager brand. That job was carried out by the AMS. Same goes for the Heineken brand at Radisson Blu, among many others.

With competency also in sponsorship, AMS has grown expertise in brand property development, asset valuation, rights negotiation, concept ideation

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