Brand repositioning should not be just about campaigns

The Principal Consultant of Headstart, a marketing communication agency, Mr Fanen Acho, has said that efforts aimed at repositioning an organisation should not be seen from the perspective of advertising campaign or rebranding that is aimed at retooling the organisation’s non-verbal communication.

Speaking in Lagos last week at a networking programme to celebrate his organisation’s sixth anniversary, Acho stated that the norm for many advertising agencies is to want to use campaign to solve organisation’s problem, when such does not require that.

This, he said, is why they do not see themselves as an advertising agency but a strategy and innovation company. “We like to see ourselves as a strategy company and work in five core areas, enterprise innovation, brand development, creative services, organisation transformation market intelligence.”

According to him, it is because there approach to work is integrated and interdisciplinary. “When a client brings a brief to us, we do not want to just assume that it is a branding problem.

For example, a client came to us that its sales were dropping. A typical advertising company would say let us do a new campaign to create better awareness and all that.

But when we analysed the problem it was not a campaign issue, the problem was distribution. So it was solving a distribution problem. “So we do not assume that every problem is advertising problem.

Most times, even marketing problems have roots that are deeper than marketing; it could be a people problem, a process or culture problem. So we do not see ourselves as a typical advertising company but a strategy and innovation one.”

On what is the project for the future, he said that its goals are very ambitious as it wants to be a resource to the industry; be at the forefront and an emerging leader in strategy and innovation discipline. “Thirdly, we want to focus more on creating proprietary products and assets that clients could explore as against going for pitches.

For example, we have three main products besides our consultancy services. We have a product called dexterial, an online research platform that analyse public relations activities for clients. “We have Free Spirit, a recruitment platform, and Leading the brand, a brand acculturation platform.

So intend of chasing clients through pitches, they come for our proprietary products.” According to him, Free spirit, a leading recruitment platform in the media, marketing communication field, was set up due to the gap noticed in the industry. “And there was no dedicated recruitment platform that offers that services.

So we felt we should create a platform that allows us to do a database of professionals in our industry that could be recruited by large corporate and agencies.”

As part of taking the game to the next level, he said plans are on to organise a nationwide fair. He however said that Headstart should not been seen as a recruiting company. “It is a strategy and innovation company. Our core work is on brand development and innovation.”

According to Acho, recruitment is a small part of what it does to solve a need in the industry. He said when Headstart started in 2009, its first big client was Skye Bank with the task of review the bank’s brand management department in order to be more effective.

When we did the restructuring of the department, the next thing noticed was the people do not have the ready skills to do the job. So we felt we could help them recruit for that department.

Recruitment was a service we added to enhance the work that we do.” He maintained his agency is not into core advertising work, campaigns and all that, but core brand strategy work.