Mike Simpson

CONSUMERISM D › ESPITE THE MASSIVE AND rapid urbanisation taking place in Africa, the typical African consumer remains a villager at heart and this psychological construct needs to be understood by marketers throughout the continent. This is one of the key lessons that Nigerian-based marketing executive and pan-African author, Feyi Olubodun, seeks to impart in his new book, The Villager – How Africans Consume Brands. In a wide-ranging interview with the IMM Journal of Strategic Marketing, Olubodun – who is CEO of leading West The village is not a physical space Above: Feyi Olubodun African creative agency Publicis Nigeria – says that although the modern African consumer is aspirational, success-driven and exposed to global influences, their essential rural identity remains largely intact. The following are key points from his interview with the magazine: Below: To succeed in Africa, global brands must remove the lens of Westernisation Why the African consumer remains a villager at heart Why is it that so many brands, both local and global, fail to connect effectively with the African consumer? Mike Simpson meets a senior business executive and author who believes he has some of the answers. 36 strategicmarketing ISSUE 2 2018 › Left: A busy market in Lagos, Nigeria. Despite rapid urbanisation, the essential rural identity of many Africans remains intact, says author and marketer Feyi Olubodun You say that, by and large, the African consumer is a ‘villager’. Yet the continent is increasingly urbanised? The village is no longer a physical space for many individuals, yet it defines them and is the filter through which they engage with products and brands. The story of so many Africans is that they begin their journey in the village and then head to the city. But even though they are there pursuing their ambitions, there are two things going on. The first is that this person becomes a portal for the dreams and aspirations of the people who remain back in the rural area. The second thing is that the person either becomes fully assimilated into the city culture, or they >> ISSUE 2 2018 strategicmarketing 37 › CONSUMERISM The village is no longer a physical space for many people, yet it is the filter through which they engage with brands 38 strategicmarketing ISSUE 2 2018 participate in city life but remain rooted in their traditional cultural identity. I believe the second is what happens to most Africans. They function well in the city, but retain all of the cultural elements of who they are. They’re psychologically still a villager, albeit one in designer clothes, and engage with products and brands from that mindset. analyses are crucial, but still need to be augmented with an appropriate lens. What you see is a function of the lens you apply, not what is before you. Without the lens provided by cultural context, brands often fly blind even though marketers are inundated with data. You talk a lot about ‘cultural lenses’ and how important it is for marketers to view specific markets through the appropriate lens? Context is more important than data. The data about any market, African or otherwise, is not enough to understand the vagaries of that market. Business plans and opportunity Context is more vital than data › If one has the right cultural lens then you suddenly see how people behave and why they behave. And you realise that people can be different in many ways. We, as marketers, need to apply cultural lenses when we are journeying through markets. How difficult is it for brands to cross cultural barriers? It’s very difficult because, after we’ve done all this work and put all these wonderful products together, the last mile that the brand must cross is the one of culture. Consumers don’t care where the brand comes from, because they buy it within their own cultural framework. If you get this wrong as a marketer, it’s like an invisible wall that you bump into. For example, many years ago MTN launched a new mobile telecommunications product in Nigeria and wanted to emphasise that their coverage extended to the rural areas. So they created a campaign in which a man has his first child in the city and then calls his mum back in the village and says “Mommy, it’s a boy”. There was incredible public outrage and people said “why did you pick on a boy; why was it not a girl child?” As a result, MTN had to shoot another campaign involving a baby girl. It’s an example of an invisible wall that brands can bump into. Not many brands can cross the wall successfully because it’s a lot of work and the cost can be high. ‘Herd mentality’ and ‘age mates’ are important factors for marketers operating in Africa. Explain? African culture is based on a collectivist culture rather than an individualistic one, which means that the community or society is organised in cohorts. So, if I am 40 then my age-mates will be people aged around 38-42. That cohort is expected to achieve things at the same pace and at the same time. Therefore, you often hear phrases like “your mates are getting married now, why aren’t you?” In a Western culture that doesn’t happen often because it’s your individual choice. But in an African culture it’s not your choice. You have a role to play in the whole society and you have got to play your part when it is time to do so. When brands are launching products in Africa they have to be mindful of the power of cohorts on the particular age group that they are targeting. If you look at the younger segment – 35-40 and below – the sense of cohort is a bit stronger than for those who are older. When marketing youth products, in particular, you have to bear the cohorts thing in mind. A lot of the time, brands › Religion is part of the culture that are consumed socially require you to be mindful of the herd mentality, because they are brands that are used to signal something significant to other people. You point to religion as being an important part of African culture that cannot be ignored by marketers? Religion for Africans is not a secondary feature of identity, like it is for Western cultures. The Western mind is primarily scientific and secondarily religious, so religion is often seen as being of a private nature. Africa is very different. We are primarily religious on a subliminal level and almost everybody believes in some kind of god or deity. This is something that brands cannot ignore because it’s part of culture. But marketers must be careful as to how they engage with religion and my recommendation is that they look at the beliefs, not the practices. That’s because practices are a point of differentiation and a point of conflict – something which brands should never engage in. Instead, brands can play with all the religions’ belief that God has got a great plan for everybody and a great destiny for everyone. Every religion also believes in charity and good conduct. These are beliefs, not practices. As marketers, we can pull on these beliefs and do something with them. People consume products that are above their socio-economic class, but not for themselves. Explain? This is aspirational consumption: you are either signalling where you are trying to go to, or you are communicating some kind of generational mobility. We see this in personal care products, particularly when it comes to mothers. They get their children to consume products and brands that are higher than their social class, out of a belief that their children will be more successful than them in the future. For example, in Nigeria you will see a poor mother buying expensive disposable nappies (diapers), because she wants the child to start getting comfortable with wealth and she also wants to signal to everybody else that this is how she sees her child. But when she goes back home, the mum will change to a cheaper cloth nappy – because she is now consuming in private. This makes it difficult for brands. If you don’t have the cultural context and are looking purely at the data around this segment’s disposable income, then you will probably believe that you can’t sell your product to them. But you’d be wrong. Is there such a thing as a typical African consumer? No. And I wouldn’t posit that I have written anything in my book that describes all African consumers. What >> ISSUE 2 2018 strategicmarketing 39 CONSUMERISM Above: African consumers are often undervalued by global brands, which confuse market sophistication with Westernisation I can say is that there are threads that run through; that are common across different African countries. And I think if you pull those threads you can get to the things that are a bit more particular to the individual markets that you operate in. But you have to start from the common threads and then you dig down to what is specific to individual countries. Why do so many brands not succeed when they go cross-border in Africa, or when they come to the continent from abroad? One of the big reasons is the quality of the mindsets of the marketers themselves. If leaders such as CMOs and brand managers don’t have a broad enough world view from a cultural perspective, they often struggle. It is a struggle that frequently starts with the managing of their own in-country marketing teams. So we get a situation where there’s a mountain of quantitative data available, but the appropriate cultural lens is not being applied. This results in marketing failures. 40 strategicmarketing ISSUE 2 2018 Is there a typical recipe for brand success within Africa? For brands entering a new market, my strategy would be to use what we call the map and compass approach. In a new terrain your compass is the same as it would be anywhere in the world – north remains north. But you need a map that guides you through the local landscape – the twists, the turns and the roads. › Apply a cultural lens to decisions From a brand recipe point of view, you’ve got to know what your mandatories are for the brand and what the guiderails are for the brand – because you can’t change your brand completely each time you enter a new market. That’s your compass. The map would tell me what the cultural levers are for that market and what insights we must leverage in order to connect the essence of our brand with the needs of the local consumers. Do you believe that African consumers and their potential to help grow the bottom line are undervalued by global brands? Yes I do. Part of the reason is that business people tend to confuse development and sophistication with Westernisation. They believe that if they go into a market that isn’t as infrastructurally developed as the West, then that environment is inferior and has low business potential. But this is not true. Wealth and progress has to do with culture; it has to do with trade and commerce. Who would have thought that Nigeria, for example, could be the world’s second biggest consumer of Moet & Chandon champagne? The African market has a lot of potential, provided we can remove this lens of Westernisation. International businesses have to accept that the culture here is different. So if you look at the continent and its various countries with a different lens, you can say that ‘this is possible here’ and ‘that is possible there’. This is generally what has been missing from global brands’ approach to Africa. Mike Simpson is the editor of the IMM Journal of Strategic Marketing. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the global media industry and has worked in the print and electronic sectors, as well as in public relations and marketing. His work has been published on four continents. PHOTOS: SUPPLIED › But we must do that without disconnecting from what the brand ultimately stands for. Heineken is an example of a brand that has done this well. So too are Coca-Cola and Pepsi.