The Nation Newspaper

Tag: rebrands

  • Audit firm rebrands

    An audit firm, BakerTilly Nigeria, has rebranded and  unveiled its new logo. The firm will now be known as  BakerTilly in Nigeria.

    Speaking at the rebranding launch in Lagos, the Senior Partner of the firm, Solomon Adeleke, said: “The rebranding project started two years ago, and was informed by the need for more collaboration amongst the member firms in the network, for sourcing assignments globally, global clients who want professional advisers with global reach and with similar look and feel.”

    The firm, which is now identified as BakerTilly in Nigeria, is part of BakerTilly International, a network of independent member firms operating in 147 territories worldwide.

    Adeleke added: “To us as a firm, the rebranding means we’re identifying with the aspiration of our clients for growth, because the real essence of rebranding is to tell our clients that we share in their aspiration for growth, for the tomorrow of their firm, because we know worldwide, there are challenges that businesses face now.”

    There’s globalisation and technology, and we’re saying we’re there for them, to be able to guide them through the muddy waters of charting a path through the challenges.”

    While also celebrating the firm’s 10th anniversary, it simultaneously launched its social media platforms and website for better client service.

    The firm said the media strategy is intended to help client, whenever and wherever services are required, for immediate response and actions to trends and events affecting their clients.

    The firm said the media strategy is intended to help client, whenever and wherever services are required, for immediate response and actions to trends and events affecting their clients.

    Adeleke said: “We’re going to leverage a lot on technology in the service we provide, to adopt it and use it for the benefit of our client, the social media helps us to be more accessible, you can speak to us through social media, when we get updates on things that affect them, it’ll be there on the media platforms to access and use, to help them braces up and cope more with challenges, and it’s 24/7.”

  • Banky W’s EME rebrands as full media outfit 

    Banky W’s EME rebrands as full media outfit 

    Singer, musician and record label owner, Banky W, has doubled his hustle by expanding the scope of his record company. He took to Instagram to share how he began EME with Tunde Demuren about 16 years and his immediate plans to diversify.

    “Empire Mates Entertainment (EME) was started by @captdemuren & I, way back in 2001/2002 – in my dorm room at my University in NY,” writes Banky W on Wednesday. According to Banky W, EME is now full-fledged Media Agency will focus on creative Marketing, Advertising, PR, Brand Events/Activation’s, and a talent management firm.

    “The reason we used the word “Empire” was because Tunde and I were crazy enough to dream that we could build a company that would eventually become an Empire.. one that would serve as the launching pad for not only my career goals in music, movies and other interests… but one that would also serve as a stepping stone for other talents to become more successful and achieve their goals as well. We started the record label part of it right there in my room, which we relocated to Lagos around Vals day 2008 – and we thank God for guiding and crowning our efforts thus far; we’ve played our little part in helping discover/boost the careers of a number of talents in the Music business (some of your favourite Artists, Producers & Engineers..) and we are forever grateful for the opportunity to live out our dreams by giving others a platform to shine as well. In January of 2017, after 9 years of being in the Nigerian Music Industry, we decided it was time to quietly close the Record Label Arm of our business.”

    Wizkid who was signed on to EME left in February 2013, to start his own label ‘Starboy’. Skales also moved on from E.M.E. following the expiration of his contract. But with this move, EME has transformed.

    “Essentially we have restructured our business.. and instead of operating just as a record label, we have expanded and changed our focus a bit… we are now a full fledged Media Agency that focuses on Creative Marketing, Advertising, PR, Brand Events/Activations AND a talent management firm. This switch in focus has been amazing and fulfilling.. behind the scenes, we have been able to impact the launching and marketing of a number of brands and companies the way we did artists.. but even in the talent management side, we are no longer restricted to working with just Music Artistes. We still work with Musicians, but we also work with OAP’s, Actors and are evaluating sports management as well.

    “The goal was always to find talents and brands we believe in, and partner with them to help them become more successful… now we have expanded to do that for more than just the Music business.”

    Banky W also named his wife Adesua Etomi, DJ Xclusive, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu and Tolu ‘Toolz’ Oniru as the first set of clients of the rebranded company.

  • Etisalat Nigeria rebrands to 9Mobile

    Etisalat Nigeria rebrands to 9Mobile

    • NCC: we’ve not been notified

    Etisalat Nigeria is changing its brand name to 9Mobile, it was gathered yesterday.

    The Chief Executive, Etisalat International, Hatem Dowidar, had announced a programme of phase out of the brand in the country after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) failed to settle the fracas that attended the inability of Etisalat to continue payment of the $1.2billion facility drawn from 13 local lenders failed.

    Etisalat blamed its failure on economic recession and government policies that increased the mortality rate of businesses in the country.

    But the NCC said it is yet to receive any formal request for name change from the telco. Its Director, Public Affairs, Mr Tony Ojobo, said the regulator has not received any notification from Etisalat, adding that it may have been an internal arrangement by the new board and management of the telco to beat the three-week deadline given to the telco by its parent company.

    “I think it is an internal arrangement by the management to adopt a name and when they agree, they will notify the Commission. What is important is the structure of the shareholding in the telco not necessarily the name,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

    According to him, there are so many telecoms companies bearing different names without having any spectrum. He said what is important is the operating licence of the telco and not the name it adopts.

    Calls to Etisalat Nigeria Vice President, Regulatory & Corporate Affairs, Ibrahim Dikko were not picked while a text message to his mobile number failed to elicit any response.

    Earlier, Etisalat, with a 45 per cent stake in the Nigerian business, had been ordered to transfer its shares to a loan trustee after the talks failed.

    Mr. Dowidar had said all UAE shareholders of Etisalat Nigeria, including state-owned investment fund Mubadala, had exited the company and left the board and management.

    He said discussions were ongoing with Etisalat Nigeria to provide technical support, adding that it could continue to use the brand for another three weeks before phasing it out.

    “There’s a new board and we are not part of that company. We have sent our termination letter for the management agreement,” the Etisalat chief had said.

    On July 4, a new board was appointed for Etisalat Nigeria by the CBN, NCC and the lenders, to handle the smooth transition of the telco after a reallocation of shares.

    A former deputy Managing Director, Celtel Nigeria (now Airtel Nigeria), Boye Olusanya, was appointed as the chief executive officer of Etisalat Nigeria to replace Mathiew Willsher. Dr. Jpseph Nnanna, a Deputy Governor (Financial System Stability) at CBN was appointed the chair of the board.

    NCC has warned the lenders that the licence awarded to Etisalat Nigeria, with 21million customers already, is not transferable to stop the banks from taking ownership of the company.

  • Nigerdock Academy rebrands

    To enhance Nigeria’s local capacity in the energy sector, Nigerdock has rebranded itsTraining and Development Academy.

    Representatives of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN), Nigerian Institute of Welding (NIW), International Oil and Gas Companies (IOCs) as well as business partners, graced the occasion. They commended Nigerdock for its efforts to bolster local content and put the country on the global map in complex oil and gas projects delivery.

    Unveiling the new academy known as Nigerdock Training Centre, the Group Corporate Affairs Director, Jagal, Joy Okebalama, noted that by rebranding the centre, the company will be able to replicate its excellent quality footprints in the industry. It will also be able to increase its accreditation, enable partnerships with relevant public and private organisations, arm the youth with skills for employment and life and will, ultimately, be franchised across the country to offer internationally accredited qualifications in various disciplines.

    She recalled the centre recorded a landmark in 2012, when it was adjudged most suitable for developing training programmes in various skills lacking in the oil and gas sector on the back of the Chevron DSO Project in the country.

    A  globally recognised centre,the academy has been training tradesmen and professionals for over three decades, recording over 6,000 trainees in various skills. They include project management, quality assurance, occupational health and safety, welding, fitting, painting and coating, machining, lifting, rigging and scaffolding.

  • Baba Alagbado rebrands

    Iyiola Omisore, who these days loves to precede his name with “Dr”, after some PhD award from a foreign university, is rebranding — and on a far more polite level than hitherto.  That cannot be bad!

    On the stumps for the 2014 Osun governorship election, he essayed playing the new folksy man of the people, after Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose, who just romped to a stupendous victory over the staid Kayode Fayemi.  But he ended up — to be sure, by cynical enemies — being dubbed Baba Alagbado, after his rather suspect newfound romance with public munching at maize cobs, just to press his ordinariness; or better still, folksiness.

    But it ended up real bad with the putative gubernatorial hopeful ending up as a butt of cruel jokes, particularly in cyberspace. Nigerian politicians, and their supporters, take no prisoners.

    Indeed Omisore, on those stumps, cut the picture of the tragic Coriolanus. In Shakespeare’s dramatic tragedy of that name.  A proud, young patrician, willy-nilly, must be consul. His mother had decreed so.  So, if it took playing the humble soul, so be it!

    But these Roman patricians didn’t reckon with the treacherous tribunes, mortal enemies of poor Coriolanus, who baited the people against him until Rome banned Coriolanus to his doom. Neither did they reckon with Coriolanus’s own raging pride and bristling anger.

    Well, on the last bend toward another Osun election, the Omisore electoral disguise appears enjoying a remake on a higher pedestal.  That should thrill polite society.

    In 2014, Omisore projected, well a dire strain of sinister humility, crunching corn; and his camp letting out threats that, thanks to federal might, the Osun gubernatorial diadem was his to lose.

    In the final stretch to 2018, Omisore is talking the talk, as some “expat expert” (apologies to Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters), and waxing lyrical and poetic over public-private-(sector)-participation (PPP), in infrastructure upgrade and allied engineering matters.  Orunmila be praised.

    The other day, he held star-struck folks at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) gasping for more.  A new technocratic whiz kid just landed in town!

    But like Coriolanus too, something didn’t just add up.  The new Omisore make over as a public policy wonk is welcome.  It’s a win-win situation. You can’t claim the polity is progressing and yet political players, at election time, are stuck with the Busari Adelakun-Lamidi Adedibu-franchised push-and-pull politics, simply because the player is intellect-challenged, and would rather hide under empty bluff and bluster. So, Omisore should be encouraged in his new path.

    But then, it is doubtful if Omisore himself, like Coriolanus, ever reckoned with his unvarnished id, which would never be repressed.

    Even from his newfound fantasyland of intellectualism, Omisore blurted out with a clear tale by the moonlight — he won the 2014 election (ha!) and he was simply rigged out!

    Surprised at this pure fiction, from Samarkarland? (Apologies again to our own WS!).  Well, just be comforted by that old quip: a leopard seldom changes its spots.

    Now, you can’t beat the good, old Brits in laconic put-downs, can you?

    So long for electoral rebranding, from Baba Alagbado to policy wonk.

  • Investcorp rebrands

    Investcorp Medicare Limited, a national health maintenance organisation, has changed the name of the company to Wellness Health Management Services Limited for better service delivery.

    The change was announced at a press briefing at Wellness Health Management head office, Gbagada Phase II, Lagos, by the Executive Director, Wellness Health Management Services Limited, Mrs Adetutu Afolabi.

    She said the reason for the decision to change the name of the company was to rebrand, reposition and excel in the role of providing quality healthcare solution Investcorp Medicare Limited was known for since its inception.

    She further emphasised that the organisation’s new name is accompanied with a wide range of improved healthcare services designed to meet the needs of every client. She said: “We work with our corporate partners through the development of innovation and high quality healthcare solution that offer them superior service experience, more convenience and flexibility which ensure that they derive maximum value for their money.

    “As an innovative Health Insurance organisation, we offer our customers a world of unique benefits because we know that our clients deserve only the best even beyond the basic healthcare cover. Some of these benefits include, but not limited to flexibility, which ensures that clients can change their hospital/service providers and also upgrade their health plan benefits at any time during the policy period.”

  • 3CL Eagle Schnapps rebrands

    3CL Eagle Schnapps rebrands

    In a fast moving market like the Nigerian market, aggressive competition has become the order of the day for businesses.This is why experts say rebranding is required to create a more compelling reason to buy in the minds of the target customer. Brands like Guinness, Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s are iconic, global in their status. Yet their market leadership over the decades have all changed.

    To ensure they keep abreast of changing needs in the market place, some branding requires extensive change in order for the business to achieve the required regeneration for growth and profitable returns.  Intercontinental Distillers Limited (IDL), makers of Chelsea Dry Gin, Squadron Dark Rum, etc put this into practice recently when it relaunched the 3CL Eagle Schnapps across various states in the country.

    Aware that they need to stay relevant to their target market, to keep up with the times and keep pace with changing customer needs, the company visited various markets including Ojuwoye in Mushin, Oke-Arin in Lagos, Sango Market in Ogun state and Agbeni Market in Ibadan-Oyo state with fanfare.

    The Head of Marketing, MrBolajiAlalade describes the relaunch as a necessity. According to him, the brand has been refreshed and consumers can now enjoy a better drinking experience. He added that the new look affords the brand a better interaction with the consumers.

    Alalade said a lot of marketing research and innovation went into the new 3CL Eagle Schnapps, he therefore encouraged trade partners to stock up as it will yield the desired dividends.

    The Iyaloja General, OdiOlowoOjuwoye LCDA, MrsMufuliatAdebunmi, thanked the management of Intercontinental Distillers Limited for bringing the event close to traders and wished the brand greater heights.

    The relaunch not only presented the new face of the 3cl Eagle Aromatic Schnapps, but also offered a very warm embrace to consumers and everyone able to sample the relaunched brand in appreciation of their patronage and acceptance of the brand.

    There was music, dance, drama and games which afforded opportunities to traders and passers-by of the various markets  and so many of them went home with several gifts such as Pens, T-shirts and Buckets. A random pick from the audience showed off great talents and winners were rewarded.

  • For Mandela, Bayelsa Jazz Festival rebrands

    For Mandela, Bayelsa Jazz Festival rebrands

    For a global music culture that is gradually being imbibed by the Bayelsa State people, last Saturday night could be described as a first outing with a bomb.

    Bayelsa was enmeshed in a sleepless night roaring with thrilling cymbals, trumpets, percussions, pianos, flutes, guitars and sonorous voices. It was the maiden edition of the much-publicised Bayelsa International Jazz Festival. The show featured an impressive line-up of world-class acts, including the revered South African jazz maestro Hugh Masekela and Nigeria’s Afrobeat King Femi Kuti, whose elevated performance could have been inspired by his nomination for yet another Grammy award, a feat he is enjoying for the fourth time in 10 years.

    The show, planned two months ago, was adjusted for ex-South African president, Nelson Mandela, who passed on last Thursday.

    South African High Commissioner in Nigeria Mr. Lulu Mnguni, who recalled Nigeria’s support for Mandela’s struggle for freedom, said the life of the former leader was a life well spent; “a life to be celebrated, hence it appears we are not mourning, but celebrating with Nigeria, who didn’t leave the trenches during Mandela’s struggle for the liberation of the South African people from colonialism and apartheid.”

    Prior to the performances by these two giants, Kuti and Masekela, support acts like Ego Ogbaro (Nigeria) Somi (USA), Bright Gain (Nigeria), Gangbe Brass Band (Cotonou), Lekan Babalola and the Afro Jazz Messengers (UK), created a steady rise of the show, with a tempo that took fun seekers to the much-anticipated climax. The carnival-like concert, which increased business activities around the Gloryland Cultural Centre in Yenagoa, got music enthusiasts frolicking till the early hours of Sunday.

    A conscious tourism commitment by the state government, through its Tourism Development Agency, is joining states, such as Lagos and Cross River to give Nigeria a plausible music identity of global colouration.A show, such as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival in South Africa, is a major tourism earner that brings about 34,000 visitors annually, same goes for the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg every year.

    Babalola’s folktale-like signature tune set the mood for an evening of home ‘delicacy.’ He jammed with the Eko Brass Band, leading the way for high pitch trumpeting and a skilful dexterity as a traditional percussionist, singing familiar tunes, suh as Iya Ni Wura, a popular Lagos Island song.

    Following Babalola’s act were performances by Daniel Isele, a multi-instrumentalist from Benin, who paved the way for another great treat from the seven-man Naijazz All Stars. The group, whose members came from the UK, US, Nigeria and South Africa, was another set to behold.

    But just before Masekela lifted his trumpet, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson, who apparently had foreknowledge of the old man’s art, conferred on him, an honorary citizen of Bayelsa State. The governor, who said he was also adding ‘Ezokene’ to the names of the South African musician, said he was honouring him for his ‘historic visit to Bayelsa and his long-time commitment and dedication to African music.’ The honour came with a certificate and symbolic plaque, containing ‘the crest and colours of Ijaw nation.’ Masekela expressed his gratitude for the honour, saying he was adding the prefix, Iringbemi (a Yoruba word for sojourn’s fortune) to his new name.

    Sporting a Niger Delta attire, the musician sprang into action, dazzling the crowd with his multiple vocals, varying pitch, trumpeting prowess and hilarious dance steps, unusual of a man his age.

    His performance continued with Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s classic Lady and Orlando Julius hit Asiko, confirming his place as a versatile African musician. Perhaps there couldn’t have been a better way to wrap the show than the ‘Bring Back Nelson Mandela’s hit, which got the crowd dancing and cheering excitedly.

    When Kuti climbed the stage, it was a mixture of great music and jibes. The newly-nominated Grammy hopeful reeled out songs from his repertoire, including Bang Bang Bang for which he was nominated for the Grammy in 2003 and No Place for My Dream, his latest pick by the American award initiative. He paused once in a while, just to throw a little banter, decrying bad leadership. The crowd cheered, asking for more.

    Part of the revelation of the night was the governor’s announcement of an initial take-off grant of N200 million for the state’s Music Foundation. The fund, to be managed by the state’s Tourism Development Agency, was presented in cheque to notable Bayelsan singers; Timaya, Timi Dakolo and newly-crowned Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria, who is also an official tourism ambassador of the state.