Strike a balance between traditional and new media, Iweanoge advises brand managers
By Felicia Nwosu
The Chief Executive Officer of Papyrus Digital Solutions Ltd, Richard Iweanoge, has called on brands to embrace both traditional and new media as both offer immense value and visibility when combined.
This was the thrust of his message during an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE. Responding to a question on how much of an attention brand owners attach to brand visibility and evaluation, and to what extent the traditional and digital forms are being prioritised in the budget, Mr. Iweanoge stated clearly that it is possible to invest in both new and traditional media. He, however, cautioned that brands should pay detailed attention and carry out frequent evaluations to ascertain when to scale up or down the ad spending appropriately.
“I think from a budgeting point of view, most companies do allocate quite a significant amount of money for visibility. The challenge I see is the ability to measure the impact of that spend. You must find out if your merchandising spend is impactful.”
The Papyrus boss went further to say: “Without an empirical way of measuring that, it is difficult to know if your money is being spent wisely or not, so as more businesses seem to be spending money, but I don’t think they are tracking and measuring the way they should.”
He revealed that FieldMaxPro, a field force automation management solution invented by his company, Papyrus Digital Solutions Ltd, is designed to solve the real basic problems in sales and marketing, especially the problems team and field managers encounter in their businesses.
He noted that one of the parameters the field team gathers in the course of their engagement is to measure visibility, derived from the merchandising elements they see in a certain location for a brand and its competitor, which will be evaluated by the system. This will guide in terms of knowing whether the investment is useful or not.
Reacting to a recent conversation, locally and globally, on the increasing budget for digital advertising, which Adweek put at a meager 3%, the Papyrus boss agreed that indeed, the conversion rate is low. He, however, said that it is the very nature of advertising, especially when digital is completely a new area.
“The whole thing about advertising is trying to reach an audience. Digital is new and it is not as efficient as we want it to be. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the platform. But the same thing can also be said about conventional media; so a smart marketer will make sure he does all, because there is an audience in both the digital and conventional platforms as well.”
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