Brand marketing has evolved over the years. No doubt, it has grown far beyond come and buy this durable product, at cheap price and all that. What is in vogue is more of craftily courting consumers’ interest to patronise a brand, new or old; wooing them to see the brand as serving their purpose.
Mr. Uduak J. Peters, Managing Director and Chief Innovation Officer, G2M Creatives, said “We grew up with different brands. What we actually do on our own is to look at the brand from the point of view of consumption. We think of someone who we want to reach out to and would consume this brand. And from that point of view, we start creating”.
Uduak said he leveraged largely on his background as a media practitioner before veering into marketing and branding, “I think one of the reasons is the background. Okay, we came from the end point, we came from where all the materials land, we came from radio and TV. So, all the creative contents always come there. We heard all the adverts over the years, we heard the successful ones, we heard the hit songs and we heard the elements that made people talk about creative and successful materials. So, it became part of us to understand brands from that end point use”.
Uduak Peters said 2020 was a really tough year with untold tolls on the world’s economy, “The advantage we had then was that some of the ATL contents we worked on that go across the country on different radio stations were contents that we could produce remotely and put together. So, that helped us during the pandemic and then sometimes we had the challenge of the quality of the material. So, we had to ensure that whatever material was being sent still had the minimum best quality”.
He added that,“One of the challenges we also faced was even convincing clients on why they had to still do campaigns during the pandemic. And then we were able to prove to them that look, ‘if you keep quiet during this period, then, you disconnect with your consumers. When you return, you are like the guy who abandoned his lover during a crisis. And, then, you need to start building that relationship all over again’.
“So, we had to give clients data to show that what needs to change is not running the campaigns but the message. You need to come from a point of empathy, you need to come from a point of togetherness, and you need to come from a point of how we can all pull out of this. And it worked for our clients, in terms of the value they got even during the pandemic”.
Uduak, who started out as very young presenter on radio, averred that mentoring can be very helpful, and advised young agents not to undermine the power of learning continuously. ”I think that young people need proper mentors in the industry. But there were times when growing up, you find out that some people could not teach you the skill in what they do to excel. Nobody teaches anybody, everybody is afraid. So, some of us had to learn through serious observation, through reading and through a lot of watching people.
