Category: Brand week

Last year, the biggest Smartphone makers took their battle beyond advertising campaigns into the courtroom. Though the two brands had been unsolved in supremacy war for long, this particular court case was special as it was the first time the parties would be appearing in court against each other.

The result was a $1.05 billion verdict in favour of American based Apple to be paid by Samsung; a Korean/Japanese technological firm. Several Americans trooped to the streets, happy with the American Judicial system while technological pundits worldwide worried about how the verdict would affect stocks, shares and sales in the months to follow.

But it is clear that the war is far from being over as both companies have continued to announce ground-breaking technology on their many devices.

The result is an increased drive to out-perform each other by pumping billions into various research and development projects and a more fervent campaign to consumers to convince them on why they should buy their products. Apple has continued to ride on the success of its self-made platform; the IOS while Samsung is ever reliable on the innovative minds at Google which develop the Android OS.

Apple, sued Samsung over the latter’s infringement on six of its softwares and designs, which has resulted to what is considered to be the highest penalty ever meted out for patent violation in history.

The jury in San Jose concluded that, Samsung has violated several of Apple’s patents covering things like bounce-back, Samsung was alleged to have copied Apple’s iPhone in terms of its looks which is rectangular with rounded curves.

The case didn’t end there as Apple, on August 28th said they wanted the presiding judge Lucy Koh to ban the sale of eight Samsung smartphones in America. Apples sales ban appeal created a sizzling shiver in the industry; it was Samsungs greatest fear, but recently, the sales ban appeal has been overruled, a great relief for Samsung.

The interesting part is that the legal tussle between Samsung and Apple is quite interesting because these two sworn-enemies are interwoven into each other in a way. Samsung is one of the largest suppliers of hardware components such as memory chips for Apples gadgets, but its phones and tablets which till recent times have used Googles Android operating system.

While Apple rejoiced at the legal victory of the ruling that was in their favour in America, Samsung was also celebrating their victory over apple in Uk. Not only that, Samsung had filed for sales ban of Apple product in several European countries which includes Germany, Italy, UK, Netherlands and France. Samsung had alleged that Apple had violated the use of its patent, which is described as wireless technology.

Apple countered that Samsung didn’t license the patent out fairly, which the company is supposed to do under the principle of FRAND, fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory basis. Though Samsung later withdrew its request on sales-ban of Apple on the premise of protecting consumer choice.

In all both companies are still doing well, despite the legal morass both firms have found themselves, peace is in sight. According to District court judge Lucy Koh, this was what she told the two warring companies “it’s time for global peace, is there anything the court can do?

Google faced renewed political pressure in Europe on Monday when France’s technology minister backed suggestions that it should make a contribution to the cost of operating and upgrading telecoms networks.

Fleur Pellerin said there was a “need to ask serious questions about how web companies can put some money into networks”.

Her comments came after a French broadband provider blocked its subscribers from seeing the advertisements that fund web companies such as Google. Xavier Niel, the entrepreneur behind Free, which has around 5.2 million subscribers, has complained that Google does not compensate him for the amount of capacity that services such as YouTube consume.

Ms Pellerin said she had asked Free to lift the embargo on Google and other web advertising, but indicated sympathy with Mr Niel’s position.

“What solutions do internet providers have when faced with content providers who use their networks but don’t invest in them?” she said at a press conference in Paris.

Google is likely to fiercely resist political moves to make it pay telecoms firms for carrying its traffic to their subscribers as it would likely mean costs would increase with the popularity of its services. The firm’s massive profitability is based in part on the fact that once it has built web products, the cost of serving them to growing numbers of people remains relatively stable.

Similar proposals were tabled by a coalition of European network operators at a recent United Nations conference. Google publicly attacked the talks and branded them a threat to freedom on the internet.

The firm declined to respond to Ms Pellerin’s comments but said it was aware of Free’s actions and was investigating. The minister said she would meet Google executives ahead of a debate on the issue on January 15.

The controversy is the latest of Google’s regulatory battles in Europe. While a US government investigation last week found that in the most important areas web search and advertising, Google was not guilty of monopoly abuses, a parallel European Commission probe has demanded it changes its practices.

Talk is free. That is why those who usually do the talk hardly have the inner strength to walk the talk. They simply do what they have the strength to do: talk. They do not have the will, the skill, and the drill to follow-through. They are talkers. Not doers. They are orators. Not go-getters. What they have done in the real sense is that they have transferred the potency in their limbs to their tongues. Alternatively, the strength in their tongues has also gone to their limbs. With such transference, what do you expect? All talk. No action.

As such, they obviously lack character-strength to roll up their sleeves, muster enough strength of mind to achieve their target. They usually go to sleep when it is time to match their words with action. A typical example is a Nigerian boxer. Samuel Peter. He talked and talked about how he would demolish his opponent. He proved be to be a talkative person, than a boxer. In other words, Peter fought with his tongue. The other boxer fought with his gloves. Peter fought through the media.

His opponent chose to fight in the square ropes. During the run-up to his last fight, he did not make any untoward pronouncement. He did not boast. He understands that talking comes by nature. He understands that any man who can control his tongue wins. But Peter made so much noise about the fight. He painted pictures of how he would beat his rival silly.

He ran riot with his mouth. He talked and talked. But, as it turned out, Peter petered out. He lacked the plan and the techniques to put the match under control. In other words, he had a big mouth, but no punch. In simple term, he lost the match. Did you not watch the match?

Somehow the situation is akin to the loud-talking cowboy who applied to a western banker for a loan. The banker, making sure his loan would be repaid, asked his neighbour, an Indian, if he regarded the cowboy as a good credit risk. The Indian pondered the question a moment, gazed at the clouds, scratch his head, and replied, “Big hat, no cattle.” Big hat, no cattle, means someone who boasts a lot but doesn’t have the means to back it up. In a nutshell, Samuel Peter boasted but lacked the will to see him through. Who else has a big hat, and no cattle? Nigeria. How? Come along.

Nigeria has low Internet penetration; do not mind MainOne, Glo1, and all those gibberish. There is low broadband internet access in Nigeria. It is however not surprising that the country’s tele-density is improving. That is why Nigeria has over 70 million subscribers. The surprise element is that the country achieved this remarkable feat without the necessary infrastructure such as power, fibre optic, road network, adequate security among others.

Now, because these things are not available, the telcos have become mini-local governments. How? They generate their own power, provide their own security personnel, erect fibre optic cables and backbone to support their networks, construct network of roads in remote areas where none existed and more.

This is no big deal, you would say. But think about this. Each of the telcos, viz, MTN, Airtel and Glo paid about $265,000 licence fees in 2001. Thereafter Glo paid about $300,000 for a bouquet of license as the second national operator (SNO). Later Etisalat paid about $400,000 for a GSM licence. At the conclusion of the auction bid in 2001, the industry regulator promised to plough this largesse to provide telecom infrastructural backbone for the telcos. After that, what happened? Big hat. No cattle.

There was so much talk about what would be done. After all that was said, nothing was done. Now the same authority is shouting itself hoarse over the perennial poor quality of service. Isn’t it obvious that the basic systems and services that are necessary for smooth telephony delivery are lacking?

Ditto for the Internet access. The Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) posited that broadband access in Nigeria and Africa is not high because of inadequate number of fibre optic link along Africa and within Africa, connecting the various countries and cities. Bridging the digital divide on the continent with the infrastructural facilities that are very expensive would be very difficult to accomplish without government intervention.

This is because it is only very few service providers that would be able to provide adequate broadband infrastructure. An egghead at the CTO pointed out that many countries have not got investment in this area since 1990 because of the World Bank’s impression that the private sector would do all the funding of infrastructural provisioning for ICT. Private companies like MainOne and Glo1 that have invested in areas like internet and broadband access would require much longer payback time. That is why it is important for government to get involved.

But past and present governments have paid lip service to the provision of infrastructure in this area. Like the cowboy who desired a loan facility, Nigeria has become a ‘big hat and no cattle’ country. To get things moving in the right direction, the telcos and internet service providers should talk less and deliver more.

To enhance the its brand, a new television commercial

(TVC), has been launched for the world’s best known aperitif, Campari, with the title “Unstoppable”.

The commercial blends the drink’s stimulating and sensual essence with the optimistic nature of the national character to create something uniquely Nigerian.

According to a source from the ad agency that created the TVC, “Unstoppable” offers a glimpse into the life of an inspiring and charismatic Nigerian man played by David Gyasi, star of the movie The Cloud Atlas. “As we follow him through his work day and into the evening, he is seen enjoying Campari with friends before meeting an elegant and sensual woman, and a fellow Campari drinker, at a bar. The scene ends with the stylish and refined couple striding forward, leaving the viewer with a sense of intrigue and anticipation at things to come,” he said.

Explaining the rationale behind the new creative work for the brand to our reporter, Richard Black, Marketing Director, Campari International, and who also oversaw the creation of the new campaign said: “We wanted to reflect the hope and positivity which characterise the Nigerian consumers, whilst staying true to the vibrancy and elegance of the world’s best-known aperitif. The Italian passion of Campari and the optimism of Nigerians are natural partners, which combine to create a sense of anticipation of things to come and a belief that anything is possible,” he added.

The 45seconds unstoppable campaign has been aired in almost all the leading television stations and some payTV channels.

Marketing is the bedrock of every business. It enhances all-round growth. Experience has shown that consumers would rather have a taste of available products before making their choice, instead of relying on advertisement. This discovery heralded experiential marketing, which allows consumers to feel, taste and connect emotionally with products. This approach is expensive but efficient. The traditional marketing option saves cost but it is not as effective. Finding a balance between them is now of concern to marketers. Raji Rotimi Solomon reports.

Marketing differ on approach and style. They have different ways of achieving results in their campaign. Some prefer to do it the old, traditional way and others go for the new, modern approach. These approaches are the traditional (old) and experiential (new) marketing.

Some experts keep to the traditional marketing, their line of arguement stating that this type of marketing reaches out to more people than the experiential marketing that would only touch few people. According to Mrs Wunmi Enilo an expert marketer said “using the mass media to convince the people is actually effective and pocket friendly. most times i suggest traditional marketing for clients because we are not restricted to the number of people that would get the information. Take for example we want to advertise an energy drink, it is a youth oriented product but we can as well put it on the Tv for everybody and you would be surprised that even the older people would recommend this energy drink for a younger person so i think that restriction is taken off..”

Traditional marketing gains customers by elucidating features and benefits of a product or brand, promises, catch-phrases, product benefits, guarantees, and every other information you want a potential customer to know are all inculcated either in a TV commercial, website, prints, or radio. Customers are to reflect on the information and decide whether to go for the brand or not.

In this concept of marketing, the buying decision is left totally to the consumer who is either convinced or not. A weak conviction might turn-off a potential customer from a good brand or product while a strong conviction might as well pique the interest of a consumer to a less superior brand. It’s all about verbal or visual conviction. Examples of typical traditional marketing abound on our TVs, radios, magazines, newspapers, banners, websites among others. It is more about creating awareness with a little explanation.

Experiential marketing is a concept that integrates elements of emotions, logic and thought processes to connect with the consumer. According to Kevin Johnston, experiential marketing as a concept appeals directly to the senses through touch, sound, smell, taste and sight. The objective of experiential marketing is to create the connection wherein the consumer responds to a brand or product both emotionally and rationally.

Experiential marketing stirs up emotional reaction which eventually arrests your interest and creates desire to take action which usually comes in form of purchase. Just like the name implies, experiential marketing is meant to give your consumer an experience they would forever remember. Not only that it connects with the consumer’s emotions and sensibilities directly, it also gives room for immediate feedback.

You can test the pulse of your brand in the market and at the same time put every promise into practice. By understanding what the consumer is likely to feel or think, it is possible to get an idea of how to drive the customer in a direction that will relate with the product and lure them to take action. For Mr Ayo Adefajo, a experienced concept developer and marketing strategist said “experiential marketing is a good approach but the only king size issue most marketers have with it is that, it is quite expensive to run and most brand owners don’t want to pay for the services so most times i advice clients to juggle the two together for maximum result.”

Bringing it home, in recent times, many organisations, advertising agencies and marketing practitioners are buying into the idea of experiential marketing. Many brand owners are excited at the different possibilities that it offers; it is the winning approach to marketing. When a brief is given, activation plan is developed in a manner that suits the product or brand in focus and most times brand owners have a say in the development of such activation plans.

Most marketing communication outfits now incorporate experiential into their work scheme though it requires a specialist skill to carry out experiential effectively. Products, such as Safeguard soap embarked on experiential marketing when they came up with the wash your-hands-stay healthy concept.

They went in their trucks to test Safeguard soap in a hand washing campaign. Ariel at one time also adopted the experiential approach when they organised a washing contest in various places to test the power of the detergent in full glare. Harpic didn’t only go experiential; they also placed the responses and feedbacks they got from it on their TV Ads, though some were created.

Moving away from product based brands, corporate brands who offer intangible goods like banks also adopt the experiential, Diamond Bank recently launched their ‘Bank on Wheels’ campaign; this takes the bank away from the four walls of the banking hall. This campaign connects with different consumers in the comfort of their houses, customers can carry out every and any transaction right there in the truck. Customers can also make complaints.

As effective as experiential marketing is, it has got a major setback which is a point of controversy for marketing experts in the country. It cost an arm and a leg to execute a brand activation plan. First, for consumer based product, product samplings and give away consumes a huge chunk of the budget, setting-up in a location, sometimes battling touts could be another challenge for those that do general market space campaign.

With all these, most experiential marketers tend to charge high, and with the crushing effect of global economic melt-down, which has made most companies to cut down on their marketing communication budget, it puts both brand owners and marketers in the spot. In some cases, brand owners would give a go ahead for brand activation and at the end of the exercise they are not paid and most times money used for product brand activation wis loaned from the bank.

Falling back to traditional marketing, the argument is, it is definitely cost effective but maybe not as efficient as experiential, therefore balance is needed, compromise must be reached. To reach this compromise an industry expert said: “The aim of experiential marketing is to make the customer relate, feel, think, engage, reflect with the product, brand or company. Aren’t those goals the aim of every marketing plan? If they are not, something is wrong with the marketing plan.

The economic meltdown was a major global disaster that crippled many strong economies. It resulted in companies reducing their staff; some slashed remunerations by 10 per cent and budgets were reviewed.

Also on the down-side were bankruptcy of small and medium scale ventures, mergers and buyouts. The melt-down, however, brought about corporate improvisatons, one of which is the in-house advertising agency.

Under such an agency, marketing promotion is done by members of that company and not contracted out.

Sometimes the buying arm of the business may be contracted to an agency but retains the creative arm and company communication. In other times the company retains control of its own advertising and marketing communication.

Many companies create in-house ad agencies to achieve cost efficiencies/cost savings. Their reason for doing this is to create a consistent brand message alignment.

Another reason is that most companies want a fast-paced response in the market. It is believed that nobody understands a brand better than the owner. When a company needs repositioning, it would take an in-house agency to prompt such actions because they understand the pulse of the product or the company in the market place and wouldn’t want to delay in responding to the change or else they would be overtaken by competing brands.

Full attention can be devoted to the brand if an in-house agency handles it. There would be no case of a brand competing for an agency’s attention.

Most outside agencies usually control several accounts with different briefs and goals, and often times less attention is paid to some accounts; this happens when a new account is won.

Advertisers sometime want their marketing objectives and creative goals to align closely and so would prefer an in-house agency which allows the management to contribute to the creative development and marketing process.

Most brand owners want to control the creative and marketing process of their brands. Firms that come up with their own advertisements, maintain sole authority over the way their products or brand is presented to the public, and so they prefer in-house agencies.

Advertising experts see some flaws in such agencies. First, it is assumed that the creative sight of an in-house ad agency might be myopic became no external perspective is involved. This stems from brand familiarity or creative exhaustion.

Chief Executive Director of 7one7 Concepts Limited, Femi Akin-wunmi, said: “Using a full-service advertising agency does three things primarily, first it saves time, second it saves labour and lastly it streamlines your product or brand to your actual target markets.

“The theory of division of labour and specialisation comes into play here. An advertising agency has a team of professionals who would take up the job and execute it, using their wealth of experience to conceptualise, produce and eventually place them in the media.

“All these are not jobs for just anybody, because most times what happens is that a company would create an advertising department and then hire an expert to lead a team of non-experts. It doesn’t work that way.

“Then there is the limitation of creativity, it most often lacks freshness because eventually the in-house team would begin to think like the company and might not see anything outside it, they would be constrained into a box and freshness is missing that way.

“Finally, you look at the angle of advert placements, there is a limit to the media contact of an in-house agency and they have little information to work with unlike the full-fledged agencies that have wider coverage of media houses and media tracking information.”

In Nigeria, some firms started the in-house ad agency experiment, others gave up after a try while; yet other are holding their grounds till date. Globacom, Nigeria’s indigenous telecom company started off its in-house agency that handles their buying arm. Another example is HiTV.

The effect of this on the industry is that it reduces the professional employed, and it also affects the standard practice of advertising, crippling the economic success of the industry. Imagine a time when all companies and manufacturers go in-house, what is going to happen to the advertising agencies? Wouldn’t monopoly set in? What is the future of advertising agencies when all manufacturers go in-house?

It is expedient that before a company thinks of going in-house, it should think of the adverse effects, particularly the issue of brand staleness because of lack of fresh ideas.

A serious battle is raging between two major quick restaurant service (QRS) operators –Tastee Fried Chicken (TFC) and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). The restaurants are known to be the most highly patronised. They are known to serve fresh and delicious meals and most importantly they share unique similarities, and that is their love for chicken. TFC was founded by Mrs Olayinka Pamela Adebayo. It began as an extension of Tastee Pot, an outdoor catering company serving Nigerian and continental food at events. In 1997, Mrs. Adebayo incorporated TFC and opened her first location in Surulere, Lagos State. She based her restaurant on the business model of the American fast food chicken restaurant, Kentucky Fried Chicken, where she had previously worked as a manager. In 2006, TFC launched a partnership with Oando, a petroleum company that now builds TFC in its service stations. TFC specialises in fried chicken but also serves local delicacies such as pottage and jollof rice. As TFC was making it big, a major competitor arrived to keep it on its toes. KFC is an American based food restaurant with headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. KFC specialises in fried chicken and it is known to be the world’s largest chicken chain and the second largest restaurant chain overall after McDonalds. It is situated in over 105 countries. KFC was founded in 1930 by Harland Sanders, who began selling chicken from his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. KFC is known to be the first fast food restaurant to initiate the concept of franchise and it has helped boost the growth of the restaurant tremendously. Though KFC in its home country has been sold and resold a number of times, yet it maintains its original quality and taste. Presently KFC’s revenue is $9.2 billion. With these two fast food giants competing in the same market, sharing so many similarities in name and service make the battle a tough one. Emmanuel Orororo, a computer analyst said: “I was in the office and I sent my assistant to get me chicken at TFC at Akowonjo, but to my surprise he came back with a pack of KFC chicken, he only told me that he misrepresented the name in his head and too bad they are not too far from each other. To create a clear-cut brand differentiation, TFC is rebranding and it now styles itself as TASTEE. The name change would go a long way to give them distinct identity. KFC is not relenting either as they now have outlets in different parts of Lagos State. KFC came into the country at the time fast food business was gradually depreciating. Its entrance has changed the face of the business. It is contending with servics challenge from TFC which has shown that it has what is takes to remain in business no matter what. This shows how strong the brand is in the market, but would the story still be the same with KFC’s entry? Will rebranding TFC make it face its competitor squarely? Certainly these two bulls are locked in a horn battle in the market arena.

Over the years the issue of pitch fee has caused serious controversy in the industry. While it is a standard practice in other countries, it is a herculean task getting advertisers to pay in Nigeria. Pitch fee or rejection fee as it is called alternatively is the payment made to an advertising agency after losing a pitch.

This is to compensate for effort made, in terms of expenses incurred during preparation and intellectual input. This might sound absurd, that a company must be paid for failing to win a pitch, but the rigour of putting a pitch material together is cash consuming.

Pitch: Is a presentation by one or more advertising agencies for a prospective account. In this presentation, the agency would use portfolio, slides, video, storyboard or other devices to review its organisational set-up, result for other clients, types of accounts, experience of personnel, specialisations, and any other information that is pertinent to winning the account.

With that completed they move to downloading the strategies they intend to employ, to make an account a premium brand or to maintain the height it has gotten.

All these is done with animations, research, layout and all, to communicate your imaginations and showing what the campaigns would look like. The process of preparing a pitch material is quite expensive and demanding and so should be rewarded.

In most cases the pitch process starts with organisations calling for credential checks from various agencies before throwing-out a pitch. After the credential check, selection is made and then pitch preparation begins from short-listed agencies.

These quell any form of bitterness or disappointment that might stem from having an overcrowded pitch exercise and eventually not being able to pay too many agencies their pitch fees.

This phenomenal issue in the industry has been raging on, but with the new approach Advertising Agencies Association of Nigeria (AAAN) is taking would definitely settle the hitch in 2013.