Recently Brandmatters Magazine Editorial Team had an interview with Chief Ideas Lilvera Group, Buchi Johnson. He speaks on the need for Experiential Marketing Operators and Line Managers to carry out intra-study create a crisis management team as backup plan for business in Post COVID. Excerpts:
What is unique about the brand name ‘Buchi Johnson’?
My name is Onyebuchi Johnson Opara. My brand name is Buchi Johnson, the reason why I say my brand name is for you to understand that I am a brand individual. It is also because I see myself as a marketing tool that could help not just me as an individual, but other brands.
Lilvera sounds like a foreign name, can you please shed light on the birth of your company?
I have installed a golden ark that will be unveiled when the time is right. I believe it is the birth of a mystery product that is coming to us.
Prior to Lilvera Group, where have you worked and what experiences have you garnered to shape your company?
First, I was born into a home of entrepreneurs; my mother is a sea food supplier and that inculcate some of the entrepreneurial habits you are seeing me exhibiting today. For you to work and blossom as an individual, there are certain professions you should work and tap into. I have worked in the financial sector for years. I have also worked with different advertising and marketing agencies before I got into mine and it is the evidence of what you are seeing today.
My undergraduate degree in Accountancy helped me in building a proper accounting background to support the organisation. The Accounting discipline touches many facets that build you into an entrepreneur. However, I also worked in the bank, marketing and advertising agency, before setting up mine.
Lilvera Group is 12years. How has the Journey been and what are the tail backs?
The journey is never an ending story. We are still trying to raise the bar. Lilvera is a business that is established not just under the marketing of brands advertising agency, but we also have the agricultural segment, investment portfolios, and the supply chain business as well. It is a group of business, one of them is the farming business, which many of us had been positioned in that segment before now. Luckily for us, we have already been positioned in that market before.
Given the current situation of things, it is a trying time for us; therefore, we need to search for innovative ways to interact with our customers. Sincerely speaking, the journey is hard. It requires tenacity and drive to succeed. You have to keep knocking on the door until it opens. The journey of challenges is infinite, it will never stop, and you should keep going. Expect challenges, anticipate successes. For every successful man you see today, you should understand that they also faced challenges, either as a head or a leader, therefore expect challenges. There is no data sheet of the story of my challenges because it is a daily encounter.
What are your company’s core values?
Customer trust and honesty is all we do, but our core values are: Listen, action and give results.
What are your selling points and business philosophy?
Having a heart of giving and sacrifice; I have sacrificed a lot for the business and I’m still going to sacrifice more. I am a sacrificial lamb for experiential marketing. My greatest business philosophy is service. I have come to serve the world and that is my personality trait and business philosophy.
For my business philosophy, I give my best to my clients without been aggressive about the payment I will get from them and also to my workers, I ensure they get their standard inflow without renegotiating their salaries or plotting to downsize my workers.
How did your company survive during the early stage of the COVID-19 without engaging with personality and brands?
We are still in the post COVID stage and a lot of things have been happening prior to now. We had the year 2020 to strategize through a lot of things by going to the drawing board as a marketing agency. What we have done and what we are currently doing is creating innovative pattern that would stand the test of time given the current conditioning and situation which is the COVID application of few less crowds.
If you’re going to fit into every brand that you represent, you must ensure to effectively communicate with the customers. I had talked with my clients about data capturing for brands to develop data that would create chat box processes where people can say what they feel so with that we will do a lot of data analysis to run different types of situations such as interactive, individual based, augmented reality, and automated devices.
Basically, what you are going to be seeing with the Post-COVID is that experiential marketing agencies are going to change their pattern; and we have started working on that already.
All we need is to allow the economy to open up for us to be able to identify which of the application that we created will work. The truth is that marketing and experiential activation will never leave because that is how people will take decisions to make things simpler for us. It will become a management style for brands and experiential marketing in the order of things.
Also, it is how you want to make it experiential which I feel is rather simple for us because it is something we have been doing but how do we reduce mass gathering to make it impactful that’s the kind of elements and innovation we are talking about. The truth about the element is that it is relative to a particular product and a particular client. Nobody can give you a specific innovation. We will create a pattern that will fit each individual and specific brand. Unlike the way marketing and experiential activation used to be done before that produces all kinds of elements that cuts across all brands and personality.
What are the element of a brand?
Primarily, a brand is designed to create an image and identity what will differentiate it to be outstanding for competition. The essence of a brand is to outperform others brands in the market.
How can you describe the present state of the country presently with the banditry rise, and kidnapping cases? Would you say the environment still conducive for doing business? As a reputation management firm, do you think this can negate our nations from prospective investors?
The insecurity situation in the country has made many investors to start leaving the country; as a result we are already losing brands. We are losing top business relationship and clienteles too. We have different investors and business relations who are pending on zoom and video conferencing because they have not been able to come into the country to do some checks and balances and answer questions to sign pacts for partnerships because of the insecurity situation in the country. Our business interest and investor’ confidence have been greatly affected.
Has digital advertising truly come to stay, and what challenges do you foresee?
Digital advertising has come to stay. For the challenges, majority of what we have are backup and maintenance issues and we are not too good with intra-studying. We can’t harness and connect with our database system.
We don’t have good storage platforms and we have managerial issues too in managing the digital platforms to create a proper structure and this will be done by pulling international bodies to harness the energy here by signing SLAs with them to train our own digital nomad in this space to give room to reexamine and offer solutions to them.
We are already in the second quarter of 2021, so what innovation you’re bringing on board?
Peculiarity is actually the core values of how we create innovation. Each brand has it’s own innovation that has been designed for them to work. So, what we look at is the product and brand they are looking at selling and so we offer that solution to them. We design a solution that fits into the particular brand they want to sell.
Recall that the position we were in last year, was in the actual that is COVID-19 on its own so the experiences and position we created for that field cannot work now. Now we are in post-COVID time and they are a lot of allowances opening up for the economy to breathe properly. Within that point, we will fit our ideas into the current scenario to bring the strategy for COVID actual and Post COVID which is peculiar to the brands we are representing.
What Were the Lessons learned from COVID?
A lot was learned, personality wise and as a business too. Lessons learnt is to ensure to create a crisis management team that will help you with the damage control when such scenarios arise. Also, to ensure to work with a team to creating remote working as a backup plan.
We need to create a structured platform for workers to work from home and with the video conferencing and zoom meetings, businesses will float without constraints. For clientele, they had their own structures, which are entirely different from ours.
For an AD campaign what are the three key elements that can boost it?
This is not cast on stone. It is relative to the particular audience or the particular execution you are looking at achieving. Let’s start with saying campaign objectives as primary one, while target audience as primary two, then key messaging and what you want to sell as primary 3. If you factor these three things together, it would answer the questions and give the peculiar results you need.
Do Clients still Get Returns on Investment?
Clients still get Return On Investment (ROI). But where failure would succeed is when you have incapable agencies and vendors representing you at that time. ROI is something that every business should look at. But it is strategy based, when you say ROI are you talking about capital or other objectives. If you take up a campaign, the first thing you want to know is what the campaign objectives are. If your campaign objective is to capture one hundred thousand data base, then you have gotten your ROI. So it is relative to what your campaign objectives or what your clients is looking for, but there is also situation where there is no ROI and that is when you have poor planning.
What Are Your Managerial Style?
My managerial style is I don’t believe in hierarchical system within my management team. When a structure is created, a position is given to you; there are rules of engagements to that particular job description given to you. You know what you are supposed to do. The ABCD characters have been hired in the business. You know who your lines managers are that you are suppose to answer to. The hierarchical system is when you’re being bossy and when you take leadership as a throne. It is sucking up but within my management team, it is not what is obtainable but when I was running the business, these were my applications.
Presently, decisions are not taking solely by me, I have to gather my team and get their insight on how to deal with it. In dealing with the team that is answerable to me, I take off the hierarchical system. I allow them have input in whatever decision I’m taking. And in most cases if the decision supersedes mine, I go with that option.
I don’t believe in hierarchical system. I believe in equal rights. Everyone should be given advantages, equal rights to share their views and opinion. The Yes Boss syndrome should be eliminated at the workplace. Learn to connect with people, by staying at the bottom while remaining at the top too.
