NNEW summit explores lasting footprints for businesses through branding
The personality of the founder of a business has a great role to play in building a strong brand that will stand the test of time and leave lasting footprints. That is one of the profound highlights of this year’s two-day annual summit of the NECA Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW) which held weekend in Lagos.
After the address of welcome by Lola Okanlawon, NNEW president and Olusegun Oshinowo, director-general, Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), the umbrella body for NNEW, the seasoned professionals/brand entrepreneurs set to work.
The first was Vicky Haastrup, CEO, ENL Consortium, which was founded in Nigeria in 2002 primarily to bring together expertise in utility at the port. The other speakers were Ifeoma Williams, Fruition Image Consultancy; Bunmi Oke, 141 Worldwide; Kofo Olaosebikan; Kofsol Group, and Ayeni Ekundayo, an ICT consultant.
Ifeoma Williams stated, “As the owner of the company, you have to represent your brand. A brand is not a commodity; a brand is a promise to deliver on something. Through Histagram, it is now cheap to push your brand out.”
Speaking further, Williams said, “I don’t know any successful personal brand who does not read. If you don’t want to strain your eyes, there are audio books you can listen to. You can have role models that you can emulate and build your brand around.”
She also stated, “How you see yourself matters. Speak positively about yourself. A successful person is a confident person with integrity. He is confident to listen to others and hear them speak. Have your elevator pitch ready and you should be able to give it in 11 seconds.”
She then explained that “executive presence is our ability to wield influence. It is being assertive, but not arrogant. A confident personal brand is warm to people. People will always remember how you make them feel. What is your unique value proposition? Make sure you are visible, become an authority in your field.”
The next speaker, Bunmi Oke, urged entrepreneurs not to waste the space on the back of their cards. Oke explained that if a business card is lying face down on someone’s table, if the back has something to say about the business, then a casual observer can get to know something about the business.
Kofo Olaosebikan stated, “A brand is a perception you leave on the mind of a customer. There must be something that will distinguish your business from another business.”
Olaosebikan added, “Branding is the business process for managing an organisation’s most powerful asset which is its brand.” She explained that marketing will make people take a look at what a company has to offer. “Branding is what shows what your business stands for. It is about creating an expectation based on what you can realistically deliver. Branding is connecting with your audience for profitability and sustainability. Your brand should not appear in different colours in different publications – don’t look like everyone else. Clients should be able to tell when they see your brand materials that it is coming from your source,” she added.
Olaosebikan also spoke on the identity guidelines for brand materials such as the logo. She said the identity guideline is for consistency, persistence and restraint, adding that every business should have a brand identity manual to create a lasting legacy. She, however, stated that if a logo is not working for the business, the promoters can dump it and create another.
Ayeni Ekundayo, an ICT consultant, spoke on online branding/social media marketing. Ekundayo said, “Every time you get to a point of frustration, channel your energy into something constructive. He said, “Person to person is still the strongest form of communication. Is your brand the one people see in the sky or the one people dance around?” Ayeni urged business owners to project the same brand values they live. He said a business can do co-branding and collaborate with other businesses to push their brand and boost their businesses.
He also urged business owners to have analytics on their website that can give figures on who visited, how long the visitor spent on the website and which part of the website is most frequently visited. When participants pointed out that small and medium enterprises may not have funds for advertising, the experts urged them to budget 20 percent of their turnover for advertising, whether it is as low as N1,000 or as high as N1billion and use it to do any suitable advertising the amount can afford.
This summit tagged “FOOTPRINTS” is the second edition of the annual summit organised by NECA Network of Entrepreneurial Women (NNEW). This women’s network was started in 2005 under the aegis of the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) to promote entrepreneurship among women primarily and, from time to time, organise programmes that benefit not just women but men, youths and teenagers.
OLUYINKA ALAWODE