Last
year, a bank invited me as Keynote Speaker at a get-ready-for-work
conference. I accepted because speaking to young people looking for
opportunities is the most fun part of my work. Still I doubted that
young people (already a bit fatigued by generalized conferences) would
attend.
I arrived that morning at 8am, two hours
before the event was to begin, and I thought something was wrong.
Because all the participants were standing outside. I asked my chaperone, ‘Is the hall not opened?’
His response shocked me: The hall is already full. It was full from 7am. This was a 5,000 seater hall, in Ikeja – an Ikeja venue that’s not popular…or a corporate, fully-branded event. It got better.
The (captive) audience stayed till the
end of the event, fully engaged, fully excited. Falz dropped by, but
only for 15 minutes.
After the event was over, people stayed around to
interact – with speakers, with new-friends, with bank staff
Today, I have at least two people I met
who have jobs from that conference – including two in my firm – and
there are so many other success stories from this event. Let me interpret that in value:
a) Frenzied engagement on the day (the
organisers didn’t need beg too much for this particular hashtag to
trend) It was without employment of dodgy influencers, tweeting the same
thing at the same time to the same (probably bought) followers.
b) An impressed press corps. They
couldn’t believe the numbers of people and the questions that they asked
showed how impressed they were.
c) A public convinced that you really care about making a difference.
d) The ripple effect of friends and
family who hear about this life-enhancing activation
e) An engaged
audience for a full day hit by messages from a brand they believe in
because they see what it does.
f) An actual, trackable audience which
database is proprietary information for the brand that competitors do
not have, and for which it can send targeted information.
g) People whose lives were actually transformed. They will always refer to that day when a bank changed their lives.
Now, imagine that event across every state of Nigeria where this bank has engagements. 5,000 young people – there with friends
and family and associates who will hear your message told with
genuineness and passion, in every branch where you have a bank.
If you want to go a step further
(because, Nigeria – hence, everything ozugbo-ozugbo), take your account
officers with you and make sure people with sense follow through on
potential customers. Prospectives who already believe in you, and whose
incomes are almost certain to grow. Some of them into the millions,
because, within a 5-year period, at least 100 of them will run
successful businesses.
I checked with a staff of the bank to track the value of that engagement. This wasn’t just a pie-in-the-sky
goodie-two-shoes activation. It led to actual value, social media
feedback, and favourable coverage that didn’t look like it was paid for,
with account openings and deposits.
The bank’s conference was a Public
Relations (PR) activation, conceptualised by a PR team, activated by the
PR department. Not CSR, not the some Foundation locked up in a one room
office just so the CEO can look good. This was central to customer
engagement.
So, why don’t C-Suite executives think
long-term about this kind of engagement that actually makes people trust
you, believe in you, even love you? Love you enough to part with their
monies – because you empowered them, and because they truly have a soft
spot for you?
The kind of love that makes the general
public look at you differently, because they see you acting differently.
Because they see heart, and have something real with which to speak up
for you – inevitable in the life-cycle of any serious bank – hits. The
kind of love that makes them forgive you when you make a mistake, or hit
a rough patch. Especially in a new world, where a man with a Twitter
account can be more powerful than a million press releases.
Sadly, culture and tradition are hard
habits to break. So people continue to do the same series of activities,
even if monitoring and evaluation reveals zero conversion.
But a new thinking must mirror a new world. If the purpose is to build trust,
consolidate a positive image, create a loop of value that can always be
called upon, and actually grow numbers (whether for followers or
engagement) then it makes no sense to keep doing things that no one
cares about anymore.
There was a time it was enough to tell
people something in a newspaper and they would believe you. That time
has passed, thank God. Too many people are saying the same thing you are
saying. Too many people promise and don’t deliver. Audiences are now
cynical. They need something fresh, impactful, beyond ‘you sell, I buy’.
Something that says: ‘I am for you. ‘
I once overheard this quote:
“Empowerment Marketing does not view the audience as a consumer, a
person whose only worth is measured in product sales. She is a citizen.
She is self-actualized and assumed to live a meaningful, worthwhile
lives outside of her purchasing power.” Call it an emotional investment.
There is an entire continent of young
people – and other demographics – whose lives are hard, who need real
help, who desperately deserve to be empowered. They want people, and
institutions who care about their lives, their contexts, their futures.
Brands need to begin to think of a new
quid quo pro – empowerment in exchange for brand loyalty. The kind that
audiences can believe in, and that can build a lifetime connection.
It’s time for companies and agencies who want to win, in an era of saturation, to begin to think different.
Photo Credit: TY Bello for ThisDay Style
0 comments:
Post a Comment
PLEASE BE POLITE