I recall my encounters with two bright young men, Christian Aburime and Kenneth Onyemaka, who I recruited to work with me when I was running Dawn Functions Lagos, a full service marketing communications outfit. Whenever we had a new brief, we would spend hours seeking to understand the target audience or what in advertising jargon, we normally caption in the creative brief as; ‘ who are we talking to’? The process of ascertaining who we are talking to, can sometimes be frustrating to new hands, but it is certainly beneficial to all people involved in developing a communication campaign. When you properly delineate your audience, it becomes easy to generate an appeal that connects the brand’s proposition to the expectation or desire of your audience. Most important, you reduce to the barest minimum media and other wastes. I went through the same gruelling experience with my bosses, Okey Nwadinobi, who has an unquenchable passion for advertising and Tayo Adenaike, who remains one of the creative greats
in Nigeria.
In our concept meetings, the duo of Christian and Kenneth would agonise on the time we spent on this issue, wondering why we would be wasting time on such. Over time, and seeing the benefits of such rigours in delivering the bottom line to clients, they have become masters of the craft and are today holding out on their own in the marketing communication field. Kenneth appreciates that such exercise enables us to move from logic to magic-the one thing that makes advertising both science and
arts.
‘’Let’s get Nigeria working again’’ as the theme or slogan of the Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign is premised on the fact that things are not what they ought to be.
Essentially, it seeks to exploit the frustrations of the large number of the unemployed in the country plus the dysfunctional economic structure that has been fingered for preventing progress. Now, if this assumption approximates the thinking of the brains behind the campaign, one can rightly say they hit the bull’s eye on strategy even if they are trying to say more than
necessary.
What I however observed is that the theme now pass as the message. In all this, the campaign execution- at least, the ones I have seen, appears stiff, aloof, unexciting and academic. So, who are we talking to? And where is the magic?
Going through the policy document, one gets the impression that the thrust is job creation, especially for the teeming youths who constitute the highest percentage of the population. This is against the background of the excruciating poverty in the land reputed to be the highest in the world. The figure of the extreme poor is in the region of 80 million and my inference is that the Atiku policy document primarily seeks to get this large alarming number out of the vicious grip of poverty. Somehow, the campaign executions seem to alienate them and instead appears focused on the upper segment of the voting population. It is possible that the campaign planners are adopting the trickle down approach in the belief that the upper and middle segments will move the messages down the bottom. It is also possible that some over bearing lords in the campaign organisation are forcing their ideas down the throats of the planners. It is something every ad man or women runs into time and time
again.
Whatever and regrettably, I see disconnect between the policy document and what the communication is seeking to deliver. In clear contrast, the planners of Buhari presidential campaign displayed greater insight on voters’ behaviour.
Faced with the prospect of having nothing rational or functional to build on, they went for imagery-Next level. For good or ill, Next level has managed to generate more discussions and reviews. It has also generated a lot of unpaid publicity and kept the campaign in public domain even if the wailers now say that it is next level to other unsavoury things against the next level to progress that the campaign seeks to sell. The good news here is that dialogue is going on and with more emotional work- in- progress executions, conversions are possible. This is, however a discussion for
another day.
My thesis here is that understanding who we are talking to is the key in making that important emotional connection between a politician and the voters that will make them cast their votes for him or her. This will help not only in crafting campaign talking points but in developing the wholesale and retail channels for message delivery. So, how do we define our
target audience?
The conventional approach of defining a target audience is normally to analyse their demographics and psychographics. The former has to do with age, income, education etc while the latter has to do with their lifestyles. I find the more flexible approach of taking one typical person from the target audience out for full description more suitable as good spring board for planning and creative development. It is akin to what is done in selecting a sample that is representative of the population in marketing research. It is simple but demands insights and creativity and that was the frustrating part where Christian and Kenneth used to have issues with me. I recall telling Christian to his chagrin that I could neither see nor feel the target audience he was describing. I wanted everybody in the room to visualise the person we ought to be talking to, as I believed then and still believe now that advertising is salesmanship in print. As I said earlier, the duo have become good disciples and are great advertising men today.
And as a corollary, it is important to note that homogeneous markets for products or ideas only exist in our imaginations. Therefore, the audience profile needs to resemble the one that constitutes the greatest source of business. It is clearer now that something is missing in the Atiku communication
matrix.
Let me take us to Atiku’s vision for Nigeria –‘’our vision is to transform Nigeria into a modern economy that works for its people and capable of taking its rightful place among the top 20 economies of the world. My economic policy will be job- centred, especially for our teeming youth population.
’’ But how? The document identified unity, security and prosperity as the tools for attaining the foregoing. Exhilarating.
Unity and security are buzz words for the elites who are not the main source of votes. But I can bet that prosperity connects and strikes cords among the main source of votes. Fortunately, none of the presidential candidates has owned this territory in very emotive manner.
And that emotive manner is to lead a national campaign that may be tagged ‘’WAR AGAINST POVERTY’’.
True, more than anything, poverty is the greatest problem in the land today. Atiku has, against all odds, fought and conquered poverty in his personal trajectory and nobody is better suited and more believable to sell how to get out of the vicious circles of poverty than he.
There is more – a well thought out retail and wholesale politics to complement and he will gain momentum. I think, this is the story the critical mass want to hear now, perhaps from Atiku. It is the story, if well told, that will be the mother of all stories and sniff the life out of other stories. So, if in doubt, ask the Pentecostals.
Joe c Anatune, a marketing communication specialist, writes from Lagos. (08033058144)
