Embrace Smallness

In a world of super-sizing and "Go Big or Go Home!' tag-lines, it is sometimes hard to go against convention and embrace your smallness. Success appears to be made of quantity more than quality. I tend to believe that you can be successful by embracing your smallness.

Smallness requires you to focus on what is important.

For example, our team is small. We cannot afford to do every thing. When you try to be good at everything, you find yourself not being good at anything. It is better to focus on the important things and do less, than to try to do it all.

Smallness allows you to change quickly.

Question: what can change course faster, a battleship or leisure boat? Have you ever tried pulling a meeting together with 9 people to make a decision? I once tried, and the only hour where everyone was available was 8am, 2 months away. Smallness can help create nimbleness.

Big organizations can embrace their smallness too.

Just because you are in a large organization does not mean you cannot take advantage of smallness. You can break up big teams into smaller ones. You can look for the right behavior, not incremental behavior. You can apply constraints that force you to be more innovative. For example, ask yourself questions like "What if we didn't have a budget for marketing, what would we do?" or "What if we had to cut 50% of our upcoming feature set, what would we keep?"

Smallness can make you define success in a different (and sometimes better) way.

Many web sites look at quantitative measures for success. They may look at page views and consider success when they reach the 1M daily visitors mark, but is that the right measure of success? If you have an e-commerce site or a portfolio site, you don't want a high bounce rate, you want customers! Take time to think what success should be, you will be surprised how qualitative it just might be. Albert Einstein had a sign on his wall at Princeton that said: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Smallness can help to create a personal connection.

People don't connect with faceless entities. They connect with people. Social networking is huge because of this. With smallness, people can learn about you, your opinions and ideals and connect with those things. There are great examples in my opinion of folks who have embraced their smallness like 37signals and our own local Jackson Fish Market.

Brand-driven Quality Programme Wins

It remains a serious battle for advertisers to draw TV target audiences into watching commercials and then entice them to act upon the ads. Viewers are fond of channel hopping during ad breaks; in Nigeria, for example, the lack of television content has been blamed for this avoidance, yet even with the introduction of satellite TV and local stations loaded with content, this has not changed.

Brand-driven quality programming that captures the target audience has become the solution. Identifying your markets' passion, entertainment-wise, is key to winning their loyalty for good. Unlike the barter kind of arrangement with TV stations where commercials are placed in between programming, a brand-driven programme makes it difficult to avoid the presence of the brand. Apart from that, it builds a sort of emotional bond between the audience and brand such that the brand is seen as providing the ultimate in entertainment which is what the audience cares about first and foremost before a need to know what the brand's offerings are and how it could be of benefit to them.

Sears shops, for example, for years pioneered a TV reality programme where audiences who had issues with their homes had the privilege of having it turned around by Sears to the amazement and entertainment of a home audience. This interestingly translated into an increase in loyalty for the brand which overtime translated into brand equity.

Recently in Nigeria the local film industry, Nollywood, has been enjoying a large followership and this has resulted in a need to creatively advertise without boring the audience. Brands' selling points are better sold where it is positioned in such a way that the target feels like it is being 'wowed'.

Entertainment will always be the key to penetrating the congested mind of the target audience which is why we need to keep working on how we can capture their attention without boring them to the point of avoidance.

Captains of Crea8tive industry engage

Creative joins BUSA Board of Trustees

Gail Curtis, group SA CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi ,has been appointed to the Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) Board of Trustees, reportedly the first such appointment from the creative sector. BUSA, which represents 'one voice of business' in South Africa, is used by the presidency as a means to engage with 'captains of industry'.

Commenting on her appointment, Costa Pierides, BUSA executive: chambers and membership, says that Curtis stands out amongst her peers in the advertising industry as a person who pushes the envelope and is not scared to address issues of a sensitive nature. "Our Board of Trustees is made up of people who have been selected exactly for this reason and she approaches challenges from a fresh angle.

"She has a unique set of credentials. We needed someone with an artistic flair that would bring a creative side of business to the equation and she certainly has this capacity. We also saw her as coming from a leading company in her field with a known pedigree worldwide. We expect that she will equally enjoy the presence and stature of her contemporaries on the Board and that this will add value to the agency's brand."

China and Nigeria in agreement

China has agreed to invest up to US$23 billion in the construction of three oil refineries and a petrochemical complex in Nigeria. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) signed the deal in Abuja late last week, according to an official statement.

The two state firms will seek financing and credits from Chinese authorities and banks, the statement said. The three planned oil refineries are expected to have a combined capacity of 750,000 barrels a day. They will be built in Bayelsa, Kogi and Lagos states. 

Despite being Africa's leading oil producer, Nigeria imports almost all its fuel because existing refineries are in disrepair.

2010 Integrated Marketing Communication Conference

The Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Conference has been created to outline the modern communication tools currently available to marketers, while explaining varied forms of adapting emerging strategies to specific marketing communication plans. The communication leaders, each specialising in these niche sectors of marketing, have been invited to present their personal experiences and findings, in order to present a collaborative account of cutting-edge marketing communication trends to the national media audience.

Latest Keynote speakers

Only the top influential marketing gurus have been selected to deliver their Marketing Communication speeches at the IMC 2010. The likes of Chris Moerdyk, Dale Hefer, Walter Pike and Marcus Brewster are only some of our incredible dictators that will present their suggestions and ideas for the up coming years in Marketing.

The IMC Conference has been uniquely formatted to increase delegate-speaker interaction and encourage creative strategy exploration and development, with conclusions beneficial to all parties.

The IMCC extends an invitation to the directors and managers of companies who are specifically involved in the marketing, advertising and strategy of the organisation. This includes people who are able to implement change within a firm and who are natural leaders. This includes but is not limited to Managing Directors, Brand Managers, Operations Managers and Marketing Managers. The conference is also tailored to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Companies that are in their initial stages will benefit substantially as the conference will cover ways on how to get ahead in an emerging working environment.

Why attend the 2010 IMC Conference

The IMCC will cover all aspects of marketing which will essentially offer solutions to revolutionise the way in which you market your company. New techniques within each realm of marketing will be explored at the conference, allowing you to relay and apply these new principles to your particular working environment.

• Interact directly with the leaders in Marketing industry
• Gain access to the latest in innovative thinking and communications
• Be the first
• Position your brand
• Network with possible clients and or partners

http://www.imcc.co.za/register 

Goodluck Jonathan Vs Facebook

Goodluck Ebele Jonathan's life is turning into an extraordinary adventure. Not only did he come to power in Nigeria without directly winning an election in 11 years and somehow managing to avoid the stench of corruption, but he has now turned to Facebook as his electoral platform.

Africa's first socially-networked president. 
As in every other country where extremely powerful and incendiary groups vie for control, Nigeria's presidential elections are a delicate affair. The battles between the country's Muslim north and Christian south were settled somewhat by the unwritten rule of the People's Democratic Party, which has been in power since 1999, of rotating presidency between candidates from the Muslim north and Christian south. 


Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian southerner, was succeeded in 2007 by Umaru Yar'Adua, a Muslim northerner, which was the first peaceful civilian-to-civilian in Nigeria's history. Yar'Adua chose as his running mate for the PDP presidential ticket the little-known Goodluck Jonathan, who at that stage was the governor of the Bayelsa state, located in the very heart of the Delta region.

Jonathan was considered one of the cleanest politicians in the country, with only the small matter of his wife being indicted in September 2006 by the economic and financial crimes commission for money laundering activities to the tune of $16 million hanging over his head.

9ja Maltina Dance All 4 starts

LAGOS: Reality TV show, Maltina Dance All 4 began broadcasting on TV stations across Nigeria and beyond on Sunday, 5 September 2010. It will continue on a daily basis until the grand finale which will be held on 25 September. The show is aired on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Africa Independent Television (AIT), and Digital Satellite Television (DSTV) amongst a host of other stations in Nigeria.

A sum of N2.5 million and a brand new family SUV worth N7 million are the prizes for the winner of this years edition. The first and second runners-up will also get N1 million and N500,000 respectively. 

Participants showcase skills

Participants, brand loyalists and consumers in Kaduna and Enugu have commended the Maltina brand for the successful completion of the auditions and the commencement of the show on TV. 

Ruth Sankey, a participant at the Kaduna audition session who came first in the 31 years and above category said the platform gave her the opportunity to showcase her unique dancing skills which eventually won her a brand new Honda generating set. 

"I feel greatly honoured and proud that Maltina has provided me an opportunity to showcase my dancing skill which goes a long way to show that dancing is not only for the youth. Most people were surprised that at my age I could still dance very well," she added.