Experts set agenda on strategic positioning for IMC Sector
Experts and top professionals in Nigeria’s Integrated Marketing Communications(IMC) sector last week set an agenda for the industry with a view to enabling players and gladiators in the sector position for strategic competitiveness in the New Year.
They expressed their views at MARKETING EDGE “Fireside Conversation” tagged “Strategic Positioning in a Competitive Marketing Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for a Media Product in the Age of New Normal”. The experts, cutting across different sectors painstakingly diagnosed the sector with robust options and counseling on moving the industry forward notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic and its rampaging onslaught.
The conference was the second in the series to be organized by MARKETING EDGE, a foremost agenda-setting marketing and brand focused magazine. It was the leading publication’s way of building capacity for its workforce while impacting on the industry especially at a critical time of the new normal that has imposed certain business imperatives on corporate organizations globally. It was an initiative of the company’s management with the objective of further strategizing and radically positioning the publication for its continued market leadership and dominance across the Nigerian brand and marketing journalism sphere.
Some of the tips offered by the experts are: Innovation as a way of beating competition, passion in value offering, relationship as key to sustaining clients loyalty, relevance in value offering and Research. Other take-aways are Authenticity, Packaging, Personal Development and Integrity among others.
The conference was facilitated by notable figures from media and the integrated marketing communications industry including Managing Director/CEO, O2 Academy, Ozoemena Mbanefo, Specialised Nutrition Director,FrieslandCampina WAMCO, Dolapo Otegbayi, Group Managing Director/, Republicom group, Tunji Adeyinka, , Managing Director/CEO, Brands Optimal, Otis Ojeikhoa, Executive Director, Media Career development Network(MDCN). Lekan Otufodunrin,Managing Director, m778ng,Lekan Lawal.
Addressing the conference forum of participants which included majorly members of staff and management of the frontline publication, Ozone Mbanefo tutored the audience on corporate culture, emphasizing that the bedrock to maintaining a decent corporate culture lies in observing time-tested principles of personal development, relevance, research, among many others.
He also reiterated the need for practitioners in the IMC industry to uphold integrity with clients while servicing a robust relationship with clients and business leads. He noted that what makes a successful person is “who you know and what you know”. He also suggested the need for staff to continually seek personal development in order to enhance organizational development.
For Dolapo Otegbayi, the contemporary business environment is competitive and therefore needs more than strategic positioning for any business to survive. The consummate marketer noted that strategic saliency, which is akin to mental availability of brands in the mind of consumers, is key in today’s contemporary business climate. She pointed out that times have changed especially as the new normal continue to evolve with successive generations.
Dolapo noted that there is a need for any business to understand the consumer journey in order to drive an effective reach. She reiterated the need for adequate research and data to drive the whole process. “Data is available but it is the understanding and the mining of the data that is the biggest issue”, she stressed.
In his robust contribution, Lekan Lawal noted that what sells in today’s business world is the ability to manage and promote knowledge. He noted that knowledge management is the organic description of what MARKETING EDGE does. He then charged the foremost publication to raise the bar by “cultivating a new generation of followers in order to be relevant in the next fifteen years”. To butter buttress this point, he noted that perception prism of who you are, who you think you are, what people think you are, and who you want to be, is a necessary appraisal tool for organizational growth
In a thought provoking session he titled “Self and Team”, Otis Ojeikhoa went down memory lane to regale the audience with his grass-to-grace story to underscore the need for passion and creativity as a panacea for business and personal success. He reiterated the need for espirit de corps among the team members of the organization to achieve success. He then urged the management to give the staff more responsibilities and latitude in order to boost their confidence and ensure that every member of the team is considered vital to achieving organizational success. To further buttress this, he noted that a big idea that changed the fortune of Kodak, a company he once worked for as a country sales manager, came from a driver.
In his contribution, veteran journalist, Lekan Otufodunrin stressed the need for evidence-based marketing and reporting in today’s knowledge based economy. He noted that there is a need for synergy between marketers and journalists in a media organization. He stated that the era of journalists refusing to ‘leave their comfort zone’ has gone, for as he said,a good reporter needs to be a marketer. He urged the marketers to up their game noting that the era of marketing on sentiments is gone.
He commended the innovation and restructuring at the foremost publication noting that there is a need to have a more robust and aggressive digital policy to drive the marketing objective of the organization. In line with this, Otufodunrin urged all members of the organization to be exemplary ambassadors of the publication’s digital incursion.
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