Ngozi Nwoke
Marketing Ace, Chris Wulff-Caesar, has called on Nigerian marketers and SMEs to rise and steer their businesses out of current storm triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. He made the call-to-action during a Chief Marketing Officers tiered webinar, organised by Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) and titled “Marketing in a VUCA Environment”.
According to Wulff-Caesar, the whole world, not just Nigeria, is now in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment and business leaders therefore have a responsibility to evolve with the tides and re-evaluate the ways of marketing to consumers whose lifestyles and habits are evolving rapidly.
The Marketing Director at FrieslandCampina WAMCO, advised marketers during the webinar on the rapid changes attributed to people’s buying behavior on locally made products, shopping within proximity and an almost absolute inclination to digital-first penchants.
He noted, “There is no gainsay that the pandemic has caused an enormous shift in the consumer lifestyle and the subsequent demand for the use of technology. All marketers and businesses owners, including small medium enterprises (SME), must improvise means of making money by focusing on the consumers in their businesses despite the pandemic.
“When we continuously focus on the consumer in our businesses, we learn a lot more about what has changed, their new preferences This makes us more agile in our decision making to meet their demands”, Wulff-Caesar pointed. For marketers to be able to steer their businesses out of the storm, Wulff-Caesar enjoined them to be like lighthouses, adding, “Marketing/marketers must be like lighthouses that will guide consumers to the ports of our businesses; this in turn navigates businesses out of the storms caused by this pandemic”. He further offered the following tips to marketers: “Navigate our own issues; Face the reality and not back away; Be guided by your business purpose; Make your business to be commercially agile and operationally shrewd; Use the 6Es – Empathize; Educate; Encourage; Entertain; Everyone; and Evolve – to steer consumers to our businesses during extreme times.