‘Affordability, accessibility to drive our marketing communication strategy’

Senior Marketing Manager, Huawei Nigeria, Mr. Olanipekun Okunowo, has said that the company’s marketing and marketing communication strategy would be driven by affordability and accessibility as it introduces smart phones into the Nigeria market.

According to him, “Our marketing strategy is targeted at the low-end market. If you look at the overall marketing strategy, it is basically for us to target this people, make it affordable for them and even give them more value for it. And importantly, everywhere you go you are going to see the phone to buy. We are also working with Konga, our key online partner; they are the largest online shop in Nigeria. Etisalat is one of the biggest brands and it is coming with good value.”

Okunowo maintained that the brand’s entry into Nigeria was for better value to the consumers and not just to do business, saying, “Often times people ask me ‘is Huawei just coming to Nigeria to do business?’ We have been in Nigeria since 2000. In 2013, we tried to focus on the smartphone business and most importantly we chose smartphones, not the feature phones.”

He said the target is to introduce products that have global standards.

“We are not coming with a phone that you will simply use for three months and throw it away; this is a phone that will give you 12 month warrantee. No matter the price of the Huawei phones, whether entry or high, it is going to last you for a long time because it is premium”.

To drive better access and value were why his company was partnering with Etisalat and Konga in the introduction of the Huawei Y3. As he put it, “Quite a lot of time, people felt we are only introducing the most expensive phones. We sure have different categories and segment of phones. What we are simply doing is launching the lowest of the different categories of phones we have.

“We know that this class of people that use the phones loves selfies and all that and we understand the fact that exposure of the camera is quite important to them. So, these phones, even at the entry range, come with a dual flash LED unlike the unusual single flash for the range”.