Wole Olagundoye, Managing Director, EXP Nigeria opens up on the 2nd edition of the African Experiential Marketing Summit and its impressive faculty. He fields question on the values experiential marketing brings to the brand building table, challenges of the practices and the role of EXP Nigeria as a market leader. Excerpts.
What is the AEMS all about?
The AEMS is the African Experiential Marketing Summit. It’s tagged this way because it’s a conference people go abroad to attend spending top dollars. What we have done is to bring all the speakers to Nigeria and open the summit up to more marketing professionals in the industry. There is a dearth of knowledge on experiential marketing in the industry so what we are doing is to entrench and deepen the knowledge about experiential marketing in the industry. Globally, it is believed that experiential marketing delivers for brands, but if marketers don’t know how to deploy it then the brand will not gain the momentum and traction it deserves. Given plenty case studies and what we have done in the past, experiential marketing allows for brand differentiation, allows for brands to be remembered better and of course, ensures the brand leaves the shelf and gets into the hands of consumers if you cleverly deploy experiential marketing opportunities.
What is the theme for the AEMS 2015 edition?
The theme for the 2015 edition which comes up on the February 4 at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island is “Plugging your 2015 marketing Mix into Experiential Marketing”. What we are saying is your marketing is not complete without experiential marketing. The reason for this is that in the ATL space, all components – radio, TV, billboard and print do the same thing creating awareness. Experiential marketing takes it further by enabling interaction, it brings the brand to life via the experiential platforms. For instance, I ask “where is the differentiation in print ads?” The real differentiation is in the activities the brand engages in with the consumers. This is why we believe in the potency of experiential marketing. This is why we are putting this conference together to further explain how experiential marketing can help marketers achieve their marketing objectives. In essence, the theme saying “if you plugged your marketing mix into experiential marketing, you will definitely hit your marketing objectives”
Unlike Advertising, PR that are thought in schools, Experiential marketing is not, what are you doing to get students know about experiential marketing before they come into the industry?
The truth about it is that experiential marketing itself is still in its infancy in the industry. A lot of elders marketing professionals do not understand experiential marketing fully. It will take a bit of time before it gets into University curriculum but it will eventually get there. Our association – The Experiential marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) is already working to ensuring that we deepen knowledge in the marketing space and in the academia. This will eventually lead to getting the curriculum across board. It will happen. You will agree with me that even advertising also just recently became something that is thought in some schools, it was not there from the onset. It will happen for experiential marketing but the onus is on us the professionals to keep pushing the envelope in such a way that it becomes relevant. Once we begin to see the impact then it becomes something that enters into the curricula of our tertiary institutions.
What is the interest of your company -EXP Nigeria in organizing AEMS?
As market leaders, the onus is on us to keep expanding the knowledge horizon so that people will get to keeps growing. EXP does not want to hold the knowledge to ourselves, we want to open it up because by opening it up, we are expanding the horizon for experiential marketing and in doing that both the Clients and Agencies will gain. Of course, because of our leading position, we will be leading gainer when such a thing happens.
Aside from what you have outlined, what are other challenges facing this segment of the industry?
There are quite a bit of them. These are some of the things we are trying to provide solutions. Although, it has taken a bit of time to get ourselves organised, the first step is to get organised into a body of professionals and that is what we have done. Now we will begin to look at what is the entry barrier to the profession? Prior to now, it was more or less a “ZERO” barrier, once you have a bit of knowledge and a laptop, you start jumping from place to place and become a “practitioner”. Another challenge is how out clients view the whole offering of experiential marketing which is another reason that is pushing AEMS idea. This is because when you understand the concept and essence of something, your judgment and estimation of it changes and that is exactly what we are trying to do. First and foremost, the practitioners will gain respect because it is cerebral, we have to keep pushing the creativity, engage in research and all these things needs to be invested in to deliever the best for the client. Therefore, clients need to understand the importance of experiential marketing so that they can appropriately pay for it and therefore ensure its sustenance. If it’s not appropriately paid for, that will be to the detriment of the industry and the larger society in general.
You talked about the experiential being cerebral, there are agencies whose specialty is organizing boys and girls to dance and sell products, what’s cerebral about this or is this not experiential marketing?
First and foremost, you need to understand that experiential marketing do not just exists, it exists to resolve problem/challenges that brands have. These can be in the form of perception problem, market share problem, loss of revenue challenge or you want to launch a new product into the market. Experiential marketing can be used to address varieties of marketing challenges. So putting the drum out and having guys dance is not experiential marketing if it is not done to achieve a specific marketing objective, it is just noise making. This is one of the reasons why we are putting this summit together – to educate our marketers that experiential marketing cannot be equivalent to noise making. It is a disciplined offering that utilizes a couple of strict well researched events to deliver for the brand. It comes out clear that research is an important component of experiential marketing, connecting with trends is a big part of experiential marketing, knowing the consumer is perhaps the centre of experiential marketing. The experiential marketer must understand what event or programme will resonate with the target audience the marketer has in mind in a bid to create a relevant programme. All these things are not something you pick up on the streets. It goes beyond song and dance, experiential marketing is heavily cerebral, I dare say.
Who and who are expected as resource persons for the summit?
We have Danny Hannover to deliver the Opening Keynote. Mr. Hannover is founder of Event Marketing Institute and Editor/Founder, Event Marketer Magazine, USA. He would share world class successful and effective experiential marketing campaigns across the globe with the participant.
We also have Nick Tasler who is the Author of the books – ‘Why Quitters Win’ and ‘The Impulse Factor’. Nick will talk to us on how deciding firmly and thinking strategically is very important to experiential marketing.
Talking about trends, we have another resource person – Lola Pedro, the African Regional Director, trendwatching.com. She will be talking to us about trends and how it plays a central role in Experiential Marketing.
Taking things from the local perspective of those who have consistently deployed experiential marketing to promote their brand, we will be having Bayo Adekanmbi, Chief Marketing Officer, MTN. Bayo will be our local keynote speaker talking from the point of view of how experiential marketing has worked for the MTN brand in Nigeria. So we can see from a close quarter and not only from foreign case studies alone.
From all these, what do you expect will be the take out for participants?
Firstly, I think it is important for people to know that innovative ideas are not necessarily expensive and that experiential marketing is possible in Nigeria. It is also very important for people to begin to understand the importance of experiential marketing within the marketing mix so that people can understand how to deploy and use it for the benefits of their brands. These two, for me, should be the main take out. And of course, they should know who brought the AEMS to them and where to look when they are looking for both creative and effective experiential marketing solutions. {fcomments}
Facebook Comments