Brand building: Porter Novelli finds story-led communication relevant for Nigerian market

As the Nigerian market grows, especially with more Foreign Direct Investments flowing into the country, public relations practitioners need to deepen their practice and apply extra dynamic approaches to make brands resonate more with consumers.

Such new approach is compelling and exciting story-led communication about brands, according to Tim Walmsley, regional managing director, Impact Porter Novelli, who was on a visit to Nigeria last week.

“Now, communication agencies are moving to the idea of story-led communication through multiple led channels into communication eco-system, which surrounds individuals and consumers,” Walmsley says. Under this method, Walmsley says brands are put on a story and it becomes the centre of communication, and the stories need to be powerful and compelling.

Ordinarily, public relations practitioners create messages and when this is done, they need to find the exact ways to communicate the messages for their audience to understand them and take action, he says.

In surrounding a brand with a story-led communication, Walmsley says “we need to think of the content we are creating and how the content fits in the environment. Essentially, we need to think the way journalists think, which is the primacy of the story, dialogue and consumer feedback. When you think in that form, we will act differently as communication company.”

With the understanding that communication is crucial to building relationships and influencing behaviour, Walmsley who was in Nigeria to sell the idea of building brands through story-led communication, says in story telling, “we need to find the most compelling story which we will use to package the messages which will enable people to understand them.

“When we find compelling story, we engage the audience in a number of ways. This is where the digital world has become very interesting and exciting to us. The digital world enables access to what people are saying from a brand, consumer and stakeholder level. We need to find these stories and use them on how we communicate the brands.”

These days, the message is received in multi ways and multiple channels, and if you have communication companies that are focused on one channel or one way of engaging in communications, they may not really serve the environment in which we live, he says.

He says given the potential of Nigerian environment, there is a lot that can be done. The size of the market and the opportunity here, there is much more that can be done. When the professional communicators have the most powerful and compelling ways of simplifying what they do for clients and educate clients, the paradigm can make huge impact on clients business.

Comparing the new approach of story telling by PR and advertising method, Walmsley says the story-led communication is a shift from brand led push-communication into story-led content, which is powerful and compelling.

“If you look at advertising done by creative agencies, they believe that brands are the story teller, they believe that the brands are the centre of communication, but we all know that the consumers are the end of brands. It is what we think about the brands that make the brands to work,” according to Walmsley.

Walmsley, whose job is across EMEA, is to build the story hub so that we can build the communication and the content-led creativity, which is faster and cheaper and more creative than the traditional advertising technique, as PR is now more positioned to add to editorial, social content and some commercials.

Assessing the pace of culture in story-led communication, Walmsley says: “We live in a world of narratives and there are a lot number of stories which cross borders, this is why music and sports are so powerful.”

Daniel Obi