Akin Naphtal, an ex staff of GlaxoSmithKline and MediaWork is a strong believer in brand strategy as a tool  for not only businesses, as well development at all level. He believes that with time, brand strategy will become an industry even more than finance or human resource.

Naphtal is currently working on  branding projects from a holistic point of view, staging a conference tagged: Africa Brand Conference, spoke with Princewill Ekwujuru on the forthcoming conference in London and its impact on African brands.

What is Africa Brand Conference set to achieve local brands?
Africa Brand Conference (ABC) is where top brands, corporate executives and social marketers, media professionals, educators and non_profit organizations will gather to share best practices and discuss new branding methods to grow their brands and businesses.

It is specially designed for African companies, government agencies, both multi_nationals and local brands, bringing you the most powerful principles that transformed successful global brands. It is designed with the needs of the African companies in mind; to help you understand the powerful branding principles that have transformed many companies from struggling start_ups to successful global brands. It will feature speakers with real experience and expertise in building African brands.

Why is the conference in London, contrary to its name, which many believe should have been held in Africa continent?
Thank you for that question, now if you look at top brands in Nigeria and Africa they are all multi nationals mentioning a few_ GSK, Diageo, IBM, Microsoft etc. We cannot hide that fact that branding start from Europe, USA_ so the conference council decided that holding in the UK, which is not only a neutral ground, it holds most of the brands we are talking about.

The conference is a yearly event so next year if possible it might be other country. Also, it will be much easier for us in term of logistics.  I want to give you an example of GSMA Mobile World Congress, which started from France, not currently be hold in Barcelona and am sure for next few years.

We can say because it is world conference and why not USA or other countries, the organiser is looking at logistics and other accessible feature that the location can boost of. And to be honest we have not heard any issue from delegate as regards the location. The most important thing is the value of the conference.

We have plethora of brand management conferences across Africa and indeed Nigeria. What makes ABC different?
We have done our research and I can confidently tell you the only country that have similar event is South Africa, which is a regional event. That is why we have decided to have a continental event. We have speakers lined up to share their experience, Nikki Twomey is the Global Brand Marketing Director for Standard Bank Group, and am sure you know that Standard Bank is one of the biggest bank in Africa. So, being the person managing the brand she is coming to share her experience and it is not a joke.

We are all going to learn, discuss, argue and have fun. Other speakers include Doug de Villiers, Group Chief Executive, Interbrand Sampson Group, Thebe Ikelafang,  Group CEO, Brand Leadership Group, John Battersby, UK Country Manager, Brand South Africa, Dr. Temi Abimbola, PhD, Associate Professor, Marketing & Strategic Management, University of Warwick, Ahmad Yahya _ Marketing Director, MEA – CIS, Fonterra Brands, William Asiko – President, Coca_Cola Africa Foundation,  Kofi Amoo_Gottfrie _ Managing Director, Publicis Ghana_ David Smith, Chairman, British African Federation and recently we have confirmed the Vice President of Mobile Marketing at Alcatel Lucent to speak on mobile marketing and how brands can leverage on it.

Looking through our list you will find that we have speakers cut_across all over Africa and we are still confirming more speakers hopefully in Nigeria and Egypt and to be honest we have a lengthy discussion with all our speakers in other to achieve the best.ABC is a unique event