Brand Builders Meet on Sponsorship Strategies
By Tunmise Adekunle
Stakeholders in the brand building business in Nigeria will soon gather and brainstorm on ways of fully exploiting sponsorship as a very potent tool towards generating maximum leveraging for brands. To this end, a maiden Annual Conference where stakeholders who belong to the industry will deliberate on the issue and chart the way forward, is billed for Lagos in October.
The two-day event which begins October 12, 2004 will hold at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos with over 200 delegates expected to grace the forum.
The organisers, Sponsorship MGR and SOUL ER&S; NIGERIA, in a statement listed facilitators of the conference to include managing directors of notable companies in the industry like Jimi Awosika (Insight Communications), Tolu Ogunkoya (Media Reach), and Rotimi Pedro (Optima Sports Management).
Others are Tunji Adeyinka, Events, Sponsorship and Promotions Director, MTN Communications; Chris Ogbechie of Lagos Business School and Lesa Ukman, President IEG Inc. Chicago, USA.
While recognising the growth of the Nigerian marketing industry in recent time, the organisers, however, lamented that it is yet to take full advantage of the sponsorship industry which is currently generating billions of dollars all over the world.
"The Nigerian marketing industry is yet to fully exploit the Sponsorship Industry. Only a handful of brands in the country use Sponsorship as a marketing tool to affect and win customers," the statement says.
Citing instances in Europe and America where the biggest brands reside, the organisers said a total of over $200billion is spent annually on Sponsorship to push brands through the lifestyles of consumers. They, however, regretted that "in Nigeria today, the use of sponsorship to maximize consumer satisfaction, experience and relation with a brand is not being exploited by a lot of the brands, which automatically puts the consumers in the dark."
According to Mr. Dele Olukoju, General Manager of SOUL ER&S;, the conference is being planned to redress the problem, create a top of the mind awareness and open up the Sponsorship industry in Nigeria like the rest of the world where it is being used effectively. It will also imbibe in Brand and Marketing Managers the quality and value derived from using Sponsorship as a marketing tool to develop and push brands. Besides, "it will point out the fact that sponsorship as a whole is a different part of the marketing mix, but can only work if used effectively with the other parts of the mix", he added.
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