How brands can build loyalty – Olumide-Awe
The Senior Brand Manager for Maltina, Elohor Olumide-Awe, in this interview, speaks on how brands can build loyalty and the roles of influencer marketing, among others. As a marketing expert, how can brands build loyalty? And what is the place of influencers in marketing? Building loyalty comes with, first of all, having a quality product; […]
Olumide-Awe
The Senior Brand Manager for Maltina, Elohor Olumide-Awe, in this interview, speaks on how brands can build loyalty and the roles of influencer marketing, among others.
As a marketing expert, how can brands build loyalty? And what is the place of influencers in marketing?
Building loyalty comes with, first of all, having a quality product; a quality product that people can believe in and trust, because if your product is not right in the first place, you already have a challenge. Then, second is also being clear on the brand’s role in the consumer’s life. I need to feel that this brand I am using plays a role in my life. If it is nourishment you’re offering, state it clearly and make sure that whatever you’re doing around your brand speaks to that nourishment that you’re offering to the consumer.
Have a clear brand identity because consumers interact with the product and the experiences it brings to them. So, those are the two major things I will speak about.
In terms of influencer marketing, we’ve seen the rise of influencer marketing over the years and I think particularly during this COVID and post COVID era, we have seen it almost triple or quadruple in relevance. It is very key, but you also have to make sure that you are using it tactically, you cannot put all your marketing strategy on influencers because if anything happens to the influencer tomorrow, it has an indirect impact on your brand.
Also, when you’re using influencers, you have to pick influencers that fit your brand. In terms of personality, you’d be surprised how far-reaching those impacts go on the brand. The person has to fit your brand in terms of personality because every brand has an identity.
For instance, Maltina is all about being caring, family, igniting happiness and it is also a fun brand. So, you need to find people that are able to model some of these attributes so that they also fit very well. And as long as you use influencers, you have to guide them on how they present your brand and how they infuse your brand in their content.
So, it has to be a marriage between authentic content coming from the influencer, but also with the hindsight of what the brand is looking to achieve. So, there has to be a very clear strategy on how you want to engage your influencer; what period do you want to keep them and of course, the different engagements you want to use them to achieve for your brand.
So, influencer marketing is very important, but it also needs to be managed properly, so that you don’t just have a misfit for your brand and then it throws you off course.
What was the impact of COVID-19 on your brand and how were you able to ensure relevance during the period?
COVID impacted a lot on what we would normally do. I think now we’re able to do a lot more. Even though we could not do physical engagement, what we tried to do was to stay on top of the mind. So throughout 2020, we did a lot of virtual engagements. Even when we launched our new flavours in 2020, we really went heavy with a digital and influencer-led approach to unveil the product and a lot of out of home advertising.
We also engaged people during the fasting period. We knew people couldn’t come in large numbers to the mosque, but they would still be in touch with their imams. So, what we did was to partner with over 60 imams in different regions, and we sent drinks – our products – to the mosques to reach the consumers that would need Maltina to be able to break their fast and things like that.
We also did some virtual training programmes. We partnered with a lady on the drink called Northern hibiscus and we were able to train over 2,000 northern entrepreneurs on how to improve their business and things like that.
Even here in the West, we partnered with some mosques.
Our radio campaign was constantly on just to continue to remind them and we adapted our communication to tell the consumers that even though there is COVID, you can still stay safe and stay refreshed.
Lagos State had a lot of community markets, so, we had our sales team set up stores in some of those community markets, and they were able to still sell Maltina and some of our other products as well to the communities around.
And immediately we saw COVID restrictions begin to ease up around the Christmas period, we had a massive Christmas engagement with our consumers.
So, it’s really about remaining relevant and letting consumers know that you are not only there when things are good but that you are also there when things are not so good; that we are that reliable brand that will always be there to support them.
The brand has been identified with educational programmes such as Maltina’s Teacher of the year, school games as well as celebration of festivals, what is the philosophy behind these initiatives?
Our biggest philosophy in Maltina is about igniting happy connections and that sits very well within our brand essence because here we build brands and our brands are built in a way that they are part of people’s lives – we don’t just want to position ourselves as something they only just buy and drink, but see it as something that means something to them, that connects with them.
Therefore, our major brand essence, as I mentioned earlier, is about igniting happy connections with our consumers. And that means that at every point where we see an opportunity for consumers to come together and connect with families and friends and loved ones, Maltina wants to be part of that connection and be the enabler for whatever they are celebrating. So, that’s really what drives what we do as Maltina.
The education programmes still come out of our brand essence. We have two major platforms that are more upscale; where we give back in the educational system. That does not also take away from other engagements that we do. For instance, we sponsor a lot of inter-house sports competitions across schools, fun days and other programmes.
These are things that we do almost on a monthly basis but the big platform where we are able to leverage and really bring out what we stand for, as a brand is our Maltina’s Teacher of the year as you rightly mentioned and of course, our Maltina School games. We are participating in these two platforms because it is also a point of connection.
The children come to school, and they connect with each other and their teachers. The teachers are the ones that connect with them to impart knowledge. And so, we believe that a lot of times these teachers are overlooked, they are not given the right motivation to continue to give their best to these children and the truth is that our children spend a lot of hours with the teachers in school, and, in fact, sometimes they even rely on what the teachers tell them even more than what the parents tell them at home.
So, for the teachers to be able to influence them positively, they need good motivation and that’s where Maltina comes in to say, “we recognise what you do in terms of imparting and building the next generation”. It is a national competition amongst teachers, where they get to write essays about what they’re doing in their different schools to impact the lives of children, share examples and everything.
We do it in partnership with the ETF (Educational Trust Fund) and then there is a panel that actually judges the essays that are sent in by all the teachers and at the end of the day, the top teacher per state is rewarded.
There’s always a winner from each of the 36 states in the country as well as Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, and then, there is the national winner as well.