In a bid to ensure robust brand management, marketing professionals have given insights on how brands and marketing communications agencies can target customers as well as build compelling brand solutions in a changing marketing world.
Olubayo Adekanmbi, Chief Transformation Officer (Digital Innovation & Strategy), MTN Communications and Olu Akanmu, Executive Director-Retail Banking, FCMB gave the insights at the annual ADVAN Marketing Master Class 2021 held on virtual meeting platform, Zoom recently.
Adekanmbi who made a presentation on the topic “Brand Architecture – How to build compelling brand solutions” tasked marketers to embark on solution thinking, stating that solutions are not necessarily in the boardroom, but can be sourced everywhere including on the street.
He added that it is beyond just advertising but thinking about the consumer value chain and meeting their needs.
He cited some examples on how a loan app was able to engage their customers after a flood occurred in major cities of the country, destroying properties. He stated that the company gave safety tips to victims and also offered to give instant loan worth millions.
He also gave the example of an orange seller who uses POS in the north. Another was a Garri (Casava Flour) brand that as part of its packaging strategy had groundnut, sugar, spoon, and suya as a total product offering.
In another vein, he explained that getting the right people who align with the brand aspiration including embarking on partnership is important in growing a brand.
He advocated that marketing activities should have an element of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) while marketers should also define what their brand architect is.
Akanmu on his part, in his presentation on “Customer insight as heart of strategy for scale and precise targeting” disclosed that customer insight is the fundamental motivation and incentives that drives what customers do, the choices they make and their behaviour.
He explained that most resonating advertising campaigns that draws emotional connection, like the MTN’s Life is beautiful campaign which he was part of then, and was built on consumer insight.
He added that customer insight is at the heart of strategy for business scaling.
Akanmu also pointed that “customer insight is also closely related to good segmentation. If your lens is without focus, you may not see deeply. You may only see superficially”
He explained further that what a marketer sees is the function of their lens. “What you see (insight) is also a function of your lens-the frame with which you see the customer. As wrong and foggy lens means wrong/poor customer insight,” he hinted.
Thereafter, he stated that the three types of lenses to view customers for insights from design thinking are: Look closely, look from afar (see the context beyond the object) and ask the customer what the problem is.
In essence, he outlined what marketers should do with customer insights as they are for targeted product and service innovation, targeted functional/ emotional lifestyle proposition development and product/services that deliver self-expressive benefits.
Other benefits are ; great service experience, design and improvement; removal of frictions and pains in the customer journey in using your product; development of metrics and analytics to track customer behaviour, customer journey; and cost and business efficiency improvements.