| ‘Cowbell take
education very seriously.
Most of our brand activation and activities are structured
towards education from the cradle to school-leaving age.’
By Linus Obogo and Josfyn Uba
Saturday, April
26, 2008
Promasidor, makers of the Cowbell brand of milk, one of the
most popular brands of dairy products in the country initiated
and nurtured the National Cowbell Mathematics competition.
This is the seventh year of the project, which has helped
in making students develop more interest in mathematics and
as well brought winners trophies and better closeness to the
subject.
By way of making better the contest, the company is set to
take winners to higher level as it would soon enlist them
to take part in international mathematics competitions. Such
competitions will include the Pan African Mathematics contest
and others.
Promasidor believes that by the time it actualizes this initiative,
it would have engendered more interest in mathematics among
the students and contributed better in the educational development
of the nation.
This was the revelation of the General Manager, Marketing
of the company, Mr. Femi Orimolade.
Hitting global arena
We think it is wise to keep all our eggs in one basket. Let
the mother hen begin to incubate the eggs and as they get
mature, they will hatch. But it is also good to know that
even when we have taken the competition to another level,
we won’t stop at just that, I mean taking the students
to only the finals of the competition and awards. We intend
to take these students, the National winners out of Nigeria
to compete outside the country in conjunction with the National
Mathematics Center. So, it is not merely stopping at being
the National winner at the end of the day.
Winners would have the opportunity to compete in the Pan African
and other international mathematics contests, and by the time
our products win trophies in such contests, we would have
made a louder statement with this project.
Mathematics as fun
It is true a lot of people are scared of mathematics but there
are reasons behind it. The problem starts from the foundation
stage and the way the teachers handle the subject. When the
foundation is faulty, nothing can be built on it. If the foundation
is not right in the effort to impart the knowledge of mathematics
in a student, you would find that pupils would run away. We
must make the subject of mathematics and the learning process
some fun. If the learning process is not fun-based but just
hard numbers, then, people would conclude that they can do
without numbers.
In order to make mathematics attractive, we introduced the
mathematical competition. It is a programme that is 100% financed
by Promasidor, the company, and the brand Cowbell but we liaise
with the National Mathematics Center, the body saddled with
the responsibility of developing the subject of mathematics
and other sciences in Nigeria. So, I can say that from inception
of the project to the delivery, we do it all.
Raising the bar
Promasidor and the brands from it, including Cowbell take
education very seriously. Most of our brand activation and
activities are structured towards education from the cradle
to school-leaving age.
We have the activities that run from primary, secondary and
the tertiary institutions. We are quite strong in terms of
impacting educational values and in education, we need to
look at just one area. We are focused on mathematics and as
a brand, we think that mathematics is a key area, especially
when you consider that what we’ve done in the last eight
years has started to yield dividends.
And results coming from the National Mathematics Center have
shown that there is an improvement from an average credit
pass of about 8% in the last eight years ago to about 33%
credit pass record now. All these are the contributions from
Cowbell mathematics competition. The competition has created
great awareness among Nigerian students to study mathematics.
We have also found out that even at the teaching aspect, there
is a strong competition. A situation where we have a healthy
competition among mathematics teachers and students is a welcome
one.
Nigeria’s voice in Maths
Cowbell National Mathematics Competition came on board in
2001. One of the ways of measuring the success of this event
has been in terms of developing the Nigerian youth for the
future. I said earlier, the National Mathematics Center has
given us statistics of participation by students that showed
there has been tremendous improvement in the credit passes
of mathematics from 8% in 1989 to about 33.8 % at the last
count.
Another assessment is the number of entries in the competition.
In the last four years, we have moved from an average of 14,500
participants to 18,580 students who will take part in this
year’s contest. In 2006, 16,580 participated and in
2007 there were 15,000 students that vied for honours in the
contest. There is an additional 2,580 between last year and
2008. This year, the 18,580 participants will take part in
the contest in 190 centres nationwide.
We also have another award, which we did before now. It is
called the Cowbell JAMB Awards. We gave scholarship to the
best entrants in Universities and Polytechnics entrance exams.
In the course of the award, we found out that one of our past
mathematics winners was also one of the best students in JAMB.
New project
Our basic foundation in the last ten years has been in the
area of packaging but as we speak now, we are already investing
in a new factory that will go into value adding which is wholesome
manufacturing. I cannot exactly give the real figure of the
new project.
An organization usually starts from somewhere small and expands
with time. There is hardly any organization in this country
that became number one instantly. So, I am saying in effect
that we are going to move into a bigger concern that will
add more value to the economy. That will soon come on board.
Competition is good
I can tell you that in the dairy market, Cowbell is the number
one. But what we understand is that it is good to be a leader
and develop mathematics, but it is most relevant to strive
to remain on top.
One of the challenges of being a leader is that you see a
lot of other brands trying to replicate what you are doing
most especially if the strategies you have in place are things
that are very easy to replicate.
You would find other brands coming in and trying to take one
element of the icons of the brand and portray it to the consumers
as their own. We have had an instance where some brands were
introduced into the market and they said they are new Cowbell
because they had succeeded in taking one icon or the other
that is similar to the Cowbell brand design. We have had cases
of adulteration, and in some instances people tried to replicate
what we do. But we’ve been able to scale through all
of them.
The average consumer
Our key strategy is in distribution. To have built and sustained
the marketing network we have is a feat and strength of the
Cowbell brand.
Although we know other brands have developed their strengths,
it takes a lot of money to develop the kind of distribution
network we have. The next edge we have is our ability to re-engineer
our brand. Currently, the Cowbell brand is going through some
regeneration in terms of re-positioning, re-branding and some
few things to the brand so as to add more value to the average
Nigerian consumer.
Remember that before we came in, the brands that existed in
this country never looked at the average Nigerian consumers.
And the funniest thing is that well over 60 percent of the
Nigerian people live below the poverty line and these people
we target at the market is just about 30 percent of the population.
Now, we are able to deliver what they were giving at that
level to the average Nigerian consumers.
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