Marketing professionals recommend innovation, creativity for successful marketing

The new roadmap for marketing in the age of global oil glut, with its attendant economic consequences is found in innovation and creativity, providing unconventional solutions to keep attracting more of the apparently unending stream of consumers, retaining them and converting them into partners and ambassadors.

This was the position of marketing professionals who spoke at the just concluded Marketing Edge National Marketing Summit in Lagos.

They say this new path to marketing has at its heart the need to absorb the shock waves of recession and value occasioned by a realisation that dependence on oil-based computations of national wealth will not likely endure for the next decade.

Josef Bel-Molokwu, Faculty Member, School of Media and Communication, notes that it is not just that oil prices are falling, or that more oil is being found but the reality is that soon, very soon, oil will become a commodity of the past.

“So, it behoves marketing experts to take on the need to open new markets in the direction of serious sell of intangibles, no longer the effortless sell that is oil,” he said.

Bel-Molokwu says the potential tools of contemporary and futuristic marketing, which are content marketing and publishing, storytelling, internet, outdoor, mass customisation, heritage, film, new uses of the spoken words, sports and Body Part Poignant Messaging, among others, should be used effectively.

According to him, “Nigeria and Africa may need to take a new view of its orientation and approach to technology, research, development and production. There is a serious need to independently develop own prototypes from own concepts based on…, not priority needs.”

Lanre Adisa, managing director, Noah’s Ark, suggests that the industry needs a shift from its present comfort zone, to planting its feet on the globe in a manner that celebrates the Nigeria’s spirit that drives our everyday life.

“That spirit has found its voice in music, filmmaking, writing and comedy. Sadly, the world is yet to feel us the way it has come to feel and appreciate Brazilian and Indian advertising. Advertising started in Nigeria and India in 1928 and later in 1929 in Brazil. Today, we cannot stand up to both of these countries as far as international reputation goes,” he further explains.

He says that both of these countries were able to set their agenda for competing with the world, adding that Nigeria cannot hope that the next generation will make a shift if it does not create the environment that allows them to grow and compete.

“What we need is to wake up to the reality of the present age. It is an age of ideas where clients are competing for the best ideas, irrespective of where it is coming from. The path to that future is talent development and a more open attitude to business that embraces the world on our own terms. It is only then that we can be sure of affecting the much shift our industry urgently needs,” Adisa adds.

Ifeoma Okeke