Redwood Consulting, a solution-driven marketing firm and member of The Republicom Group, held the maiden edition of Winning the Channels Series tagged Power of Consumer Data to stimulate and promote the importance of making data-driven decisions to achieve set business objectives.
The breakfast session, which held at the Civic Centre, Lagos, on 29 January 2020 had in attendance about two hundred Industry leaders and managers in marketing and sales across sectors.
In her opening remarks, Hannah Oyebanjo, Managing Director, Redwood Consulting, and host of Winning the Channels Series, disclosed the idea behind the series was to stir up the industry by shedding more light on the role consumers play in meeting organizational goals such as market share, margins etc.
She added that the series which is an avenue to discuss pressing issues across retail, sales and distribution channels is first of its kind in Nigeria and will continue to lead the conversation in order to help brands and companies achieve proper growth and not paper growth.
In his keynote address, Dr. Doyin Salami, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council, stated that most companies don’t use data in decision making. He also noted that appreciating the need for data collection will enhance investments in gathering useable data, capacity to use such data and the ability to generate actionable insights which will help in making the right business decisions to achieve set goals.
Dr. Salami, further disclosed that, every in-road to gathering consumer data must have specific target either brand or corporate specifics. As the challenges in Nigeria have been around non-availability, incompleteness, invalidity, timeliness and apathy towards use of data.
He added that for a firm or brand to win the competitive war, they must have clear understanding of the evolution trends, that is, know where your consumers earn from, how they spend, because whoever is paying for a good or services knows what is valuable for them.
Also, on the agenda was a panel discussion which was moderated by Adewale Arikawe, CDSM Director, FrieslandCampina. Participating in the robust discussion were panelists: Chandana Fernando, Commercial Manager at Nestle Nigeria; Ifeoma Dozie, Director Marketing and Communications Sub-Saharan Africa MasterCard; Olubayo Adekanmbi, Chief Transformation Officer, MTN Nigeria, and Olayinka Ijabiyi, Head, Brand, Product and Stakeholder Management, all of whom contributed immensely to the discussion on Evolution of Data, Need for Data and Revolutionizing Data.
During the panel discussion, Olubayo Adekanmbi, Chief Transformation Officer, MTN said, “There’s what I’ll call nano segmentation where every single customer is unique so, having contextual behaviour at different times. So, different behaviour, same person. Apart from traditional segmentation, there are other segmentations, such as technographic segmentation which is how you behave in relation to technology at different times. Thus, it is important for us as a business, in fact, every business to use data to understand its customer’s behaviour.”
In his remarks, Olayinka Ijabiyi, Head, Brand, Product and Stakeholder Marketing, First Bank also stated that data helps businesses know the customer and understand the needs of the customer and then help develop products that will meet these needs. A win-win for everyone.
Founded in 2010, Redwood Consulting Ltd. has remained an Insight-led marketing solutions company, providing Marketing advisory, Communication Management services and Capacity Development to businesses across sectors. With over 70years of cumulative experience across key leads, the company has worked for businesses across sectors and at different levels.