By Cynthia Alo

Lead Strategist and Managing Director, AbsolutePR, Mr Akonte Ekine is a popular name in the brands &Communications ecosystem.
He has cognate experience in marketing communications which has seen him traverse length and breadth of the country providing cutting edge strategies to brands and businesses offering one form of service or the other to the public.
In this chat with Hi-Tech, he speaks on the blurring lines between brands & marketing and Information Communications Technology ecosystems. He also talks on why brands which have assumed larger than life images, at some point, eventually die

Excerpts:

The line between Brands & Marketing and ICT are fast disappearing. You’ve been around the sectors for a while, why do you think this is happening?

The first thing is never to forget that marketing is a living subject with dynamism. We are wired dynamically and as such, we are a moving target for brands and marketing activities. In today’s world, we have introduced marketing technology beside the known popular marketing communications, which is simply the communications activities around marketing initiative and now we have technology aiding marketing activities.
So, in the new branding world, marketing communications is heavily embedded inside technology in view of the known fact that we are adapting to the new ecosystem of technology.
It is not a case of disappearance but rather situation where more and more are discovering the efficacy of technology in delivering marketing conversations and verifiable engagements.

Most ICT companies, including Telcos, are rather making the waves in the Brands ecosystem, is harmonization dawning on us?

Once upon a time, the leaders of marketing conversations are the fast-moving consumer goods, but that changed since year 2000, with the introduction of GSM. And, then, with the Telecommunication brands putting up aggressive marketing communications activities, you can see the real active brands are within the tech space. You can also see that even in the financial communications space, the fintech brands are doing much better than the traditional bank brands, while most of the banks are stuck with the old way of doing things, the fintech brands are doing better verifiable conversation with technology.

We are evolving just the same way life is dynamic. To make wave is to understand the size of the market you want to win and thus the big ambitious brands in various sectors are doing everything to be visible and rewarding with everyone fighting for the share of mind, share of pocket and share of shelf. There is very little disposable income the brands are jostling for and all the conversations happening are aimed at encouraging a behavioural shift to favour purchase. The consumer is looking for best possible brands to satisfy his or her taste.

Some of the strong brands we used to know in those days have either died or at best moribund. Why do brands die?

I said marketing is a living thing and so is branding; and therefore, living include death or dying as the case maybe. Nobody can be a champion forever; however, you can continue to innovate to remain relevant to the target audience you set out to please. You must also note that the human is always adapting and taste changes over a period of time.

So, when you set out to meet a target within a period, you are targeting a behaviour or set of behaviours and these behaviours are not static. You will notice that now that we are moving into some degree of health consciousness, certain brands will have to change their brand composition to remain relevant and while they are tinkering with changes, some new brands will establish presence in the space and thus, that once strong brand will play second fiddle in that category.

So brands die when they fail to innovate. But critically, in every living subject, the five-letter word – death, is inevitable; but it will take some time and a degree of inconsistency from the brands to fasten it. 

Akonte Ekine rings bell in the brands, marketing and public relations fields, in what ways are you contributing to keeping brands afloat? 

Thanks for the compliment. I am one person in a series of teams over the years from MC&A, Corporate and Financial through DDB Lagos, FCB Redline and now Absolute PR, I am opportune to work with great people in research/strategy, copy and account management and they have played significant role towards delivering quality services to brand stories over the years, from financial communications through brands communications.

My contribution as a member of various teams has always been telling the brand stories and ensuring great returns to the client’s bottom line and again, in this journey, the quest is to enable positive conversations around consumer rights based on my experience.

Brand loyalty seems to be an issue now that one product has multiple competitors also doing well? 

There are different stages in a brand ‘s life cycle such as introduction, mature, growth, decline and growth or death depending on the manager of the brand. Life is all about competition and every brand plays within certain segments of the market, I am not sure one brand can play in all segments of the market and even within a segment are sub-segments.

The beauty of competition is that it gives the consumers the opportunity to choose between what is available, based on their pockets and taste as well as things like culture and behaviour. Brand loyalty is never a stand alone, it is tied to value experience.

There is only one way to navigate the pocket of the consumers -bring the desired value to the market after defining the character of the customers you want to buy your brands.

You floated Consumers Value Awards concept recently. …?

Yea, thanks. Consumers Value Awards is a concept attempting to plug into the Consumer Rights conversation. You know we have consumer rights act now in the country and it is important that consumers are able to have some level of expression not just once in a year when we celebrate the consumer rights day but daily, based on our market experience. 

Sadly, as a consumer, I think we are not having the best of respect from manufacturers and service providers 99% of the time. You buy data, it finishes before the end of validity; you pay for electricity bill without power supply, you missed your flight, you are penalized, your flight is delayed, you spend hours at the airport and miss your appointment, you are not compensated.

I bought a brand of car and within days, it developed fault, the seller ignored me, the insurance company didn’t even bother to respond, the bank that facilitated the transaction was okay without a word on the issue. So, it is almost a case of the consumers are left with the wrong end of the stick in transaction and I know brands and marketing is all about relationships, a romance of value exchange between the consumers and the sellers.

So, how is Consumers Value Awards going to check these ugly trends?

What we are trying to do with consumers value awards is to call out brands based on consumer experience in the market -online and offline. We will not fold our hands and complain of bad services, we will celebrate brands and people that are ensuring that the rights of the consumers are upheld.

We opened a voting portal after one month of conversation requesting for nomination of brands of value. We got 300 different brands and categorized them into about 52 segments according to the market they belong. Now voting is ongoing in the past two months with the hope that we will close the portal on 31st July. Thereafter we will reward the brands with a celebration programme with badges of honour as Best Value for Money brands in the various categories. 
We do hope that this will help us in the narrative for better experience in the market.