GDM: Leveraging technology for innovative consumer experience
By Kasim Bakare
Innovation is the calling card of the future – Anna Eshoo
Above quote by U.S Congresswoman Anna Eshoo aptly underscores the significant role of innovation in all human endeavours. Innovation is the bedrock for success in any industry. With so many similar products to choose from, even consumers tend to prefer innovative brands that continue upgrading their offerings for more value.
More than ever before, innovation has become so pivotal for brands to create a connection with consumers in all aspects of the consumer journey. Leading companies know that great products are necessary but not sufficient: In today’s world, you have to deliver great consumer experiences in order to succeed.
To create such unique consumer experiences, experiential marketing agencies have become veritable tools for brands desirous of delivering a unique brand experience to its customers.
Coming on the heels of Covid-19 outbreak, the whole dynamics of consumer experience and engagement changed as government-introduced protocols and restrictions abhorred the core essence of experiential marketing- creating experiences. Such protocols like wearing of face masks, social distancing dealt a huge blow on the experimental marketing industry and not a few agencies have had sad tales to tell from it.
According to Mckinsey & Company, consumer experience has taken on a new definition and dimension in the wake of the overwhelming challenge of Covid-19, driving experiential marketers to innovate during the crisis and anticipate how customers will change their habits while building stronger relationships with them.
Interestingly, a visionary and consummate experiential marketing professional in Nigeria, envisioned a ‘revolution’ in the experiential marketing ecosystem, years before the outbreak of Covid-19, built technology driven platforms capable of creating a seamless consumer experience and engagement around brands without physical engagement.
Call him the Nostradamus of the experiential marketing industry and you may not be far from it. Victor Gbenga Afolabi, the debonair founder of the GDM Group, a leading innovative experiential agency in Nigeria, while delivering a keynote speech at a Brand Conference in 2019, had spoken on the need for the experiential industry to adjust and re-think its operational model to adapt to the imperatives of the digital revolution on the consumer and the marketplace. Some participants at the conference thought it was a crazy idea to even think of creating experiences around a brand without physical engagement.
Few months after Afolabi’s keynote speech at the conference, the unthinkable happened – Covid-19. The global pandemic broke out in December, 2019, in Wuhan, China. The pandemic greatly impacted the business world globally as marketing activities took a down turn because of restrictions imposed to curb the pandemic landscape. Notably, the experiential marketing industry has been the most hit of all the sub sectors of the integrated marketing communications(IMC) industry due to the “unfriendliness’ of the protocols adopted to curtail the pandemic.
Hear him: “During the 2019 Brand conference, I made bold to say that the experiential industry was changing. It was really not a popular opinion then. What I was speaking about was that we needed to look round and think. If the current consumer is no longer the way the consumer was when our mothers were there or the way I am now, the question is; how are these young generation going to be consumers? The present generation are predominantly digital natives. What kind of information are they exposed to? What is their media consumption pattern? Six months down the line, Covid-19 came and experiential agencies became flat”.
Commenting on how his agency was able to play in the ‘new normal’, the GDM boss noted that it leveraged technology which was already built into its operations prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.
“At GDM, we were already looking at technology, data, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Long before covid-19 came, we had started building technology competence. You don’t start building competence when there is crisis. Today we are arguably the only experiential agency with a strong and robust marketing analytics department. We do a lot data collection, data processing, data interpretation. We also do a lot of hackathons”.
Speaking further on how the deployment of the new technology has improved its operations, he said: “At GDM, we have been toying with different types of technology platforms and we have used technology to shape and better our operations. Quite significantly, we have also used technology to improve consumer engagement for our clients. We had the technology in place before Covid-19. What Covid only did was that what we were expecting to launch in 5 years, it put us under a lot of pressure to launch it in one year as consumers are now asking for engagements that are not physical”
He added:”Because of Covid-19, there is social distancing and one needs to create an experience around the brand. The only way the consumer can experience it from his/her home is for me to create the technology just like apps like TikTok and the likes are doing around content. It is technology-driven. We have been doing that and that is what has kept us to continue to push in creating experiences for customers on behalf of our clients”.
Succession has arguably been the greatest challenge of most successful agencies in Nigeria. In fact, very few agencies owners in the entire IMC have been able to put in place a good succession plan in the event of any eventuality to the owner. Afolabi explained that the leading experiential agency has successfully initiated and completed a succession/transition process.
“We have done a lot of movements. We have seen one of our colleagues become the substantive MD. We have successfully carried out succession and transition. These are critical milestones of an agency where key man risks are being taken out and you de-risk the business. We have been able to do that in the last 9 months.
Continuing, he said:”It speaks to the testament of the strength of corporate governance we have institutionalized in the agency. We are happy about the work the people there are doing. We have had quite a number of young people being mentored.. We have become a factory for producing agency materials for other agencies to poach. We have also become a fertile ground for clients to recruit people from”.
On his projection for the agency in the competitive experiential marketing industry, the quintessential serial entrepreneur said:”We will continue to play a vital role in the ecosystem as we raise the bar and drive the perception of what experiential marketers and the value they bring to the table.
He added:”I think as an agency and at least for the foreseeable future based on the innovation which become a core of our DNA, we see ourselves(GDM) leading the experiential agency segment of the advertising business”.
Speaking on the growth trajectory of the agency in the highly competitive experiential marketing industry, Afolabi noted that the agency has made significant progress and landmark in its twelve years of existence, creating experiences around brands across different sectors of the economy. Tracing the history of the agency, he said:
“GDM was formed in the last quarter of 2009 but started its operations in January, 2010. We have done a fairly good job of bringing value to the industry. We are arguably one of the largest agencies. We have worked with over 45 clients in the last 12 years. Interestingly, we still retain 23 of those 45 clients as at today. We have worked on 212 brands over the course of the 12 years. This has given us vast experience. We have been able to grow brands, and also grow our business too”.
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