SO&U lands multimillion Naira Mitsubishi brands marketing deal
SO&U, a full service Nigerian top marketing communications company has secured multimillion Naira marketing deal for Japanese Mitsubishi products in Nigeria. The business win followed a hard fought pitch process with other agencies since May this year for the Mitsubishi brands campaign.
Massilia Motors Limited, representative of Mitsubishi Motors in Nigeria had last three months thrown open the pitch to creative marketing communication agencies as part of its plan and determination to further project the image of Mitsubishi and boost sales of the Japanese brand of vehicles including popular Pajero in the thriving Nigerian auto market.
After the competitive presentations by the contending agencies, it was gathered that the management of Massilia Motors Limited was convinced by Udeme Ufot led SO&U marketing approaches and its 360 execution plan involving TVCs, Print, Out-of-Home, Digital, Experiential and direct marketing. The company which has worked for other multinational brands was therefore chosen for the task.
Massilia Motors Limited, established early last year, is a joint venture between CFAO and KewalramChanrai Group. In the past, Mitsubishi brands were marketed by the two distributors – CFAO and Kewalrams which created challenges on how to create a common ground to nurture the brand and make it very attractive to its target market. The two companies resolved this challenge by coming together to form Massilia as sole distributor of Mitsubishi vehicles in Nigeria.
Mitsubishi perhaps knows it has good products that could perform better than it was doing in terms of market share, sales and profit, which necessitated the pitch, a source told BusinessDay.
It is expected that SO&U which has successfully worked on brands such as Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank, Guinness Nigeria, Procter & Gamble, leveraging local relevance will bring such experience to bear on Mitsubishi brands. The company which deepened Guinness brand with famous ‘Udeme’ campaign said it has purpose of building brands that live in the consumers mind, influence their lifestyle and at the same time deliver profit to their clients.
When contacted on the new business, Biodun Adefila, Executive Director – Brand Management at SO&U confirmed the business and relished that the industry will see many more of these wins as this is just the beginning. She encouraged Nigerians to be on the look-out for a definite change in the way they perceive and have related with Mitsubishi brands thus far. She said that Mitsubishi brands have a lot of plus when compared with others, but “the tough luck was that not much of these great stories about the Mitsubishi were coming out.
“Our task is to pick up the exciting stories of performance, ruggedness, durability, attractiveness and dependability about Mitsubishi and build new personae for it. Let people know that here is an absolutely reliable and beautiful vehicle and very importantly, the pricing is unbelievable. It’s great value for money”.
On what gave SO&U the competitive edge, Adefila who said that the win has placed SO&U very high in the industry with its creativity that speaks for itself said the competitive edge for SO&U was a deep understanding of the brief and how it went about the details of execution.
“Following our laid down structure of work process, we first of all went speaking with current users of the brand, those who like it and those who have heard about it, experts in the industry and car enthusiasts. We got all the data but the clincher was how we interpreted the data and information to become authentic insight. Even the presentation demonstrated the passion and excitement we felt about the brand. We didn’t just present. We delivered the message”, she said.
Daniel Obi