Why some brands go into oblivion —Expert

A professional marketer and Associate Professor, Bolajoko Dixon-Ogbechi, has attributed the inability of some  businesses to do well in the market, to the failure of  such businesses and brands to recognise and exploit core competencies in their strategic marketing thinking.

Making this observation over the weekend, at the 2017 Best Marketing Student Award Ceremony, of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), which held in Lagos, Bolajoko, argued that cultivating  areas of core competencies  and adopting such competencies, remain one of the most powerful ways for organisation to grow and overcome competition.

Using two  troubled  national brands,  NITEL and NEPA, as examples, Bolajoko, who is presently the Acting  Head of the Department of Business Administration, University of Lagos, argued that those two organisations failed due to their inability to identify their areas of core competencies and harness them.

“For example, NEPA lacked core competencies even though it had a lot of non-human resources. It failed to realise that its core competencies  lay in its human resources, who are necessary to drive the non-human resources .

“Similarly, NITEL also failed to cultivate its core competencies.

Rather than satisfy its consumers, it developed anti-consumer policies like tossing consumers’ lines, without any evidence that they were given bills to settle. Their usual slogan was ‘non-receipt of bill was no excuse for non-payment of bills’, hence people were very happy to switch to alternative and more reliable telecommunication options when the GSM came,” she stated.

While advising the five  successful marketing students to always explore and harness their core competencies,  to enable them go far in the practice, Bolajoko, stressed that as marketers, recognition of core competencies has become imperative; since it gives such marketer the opportunity to know the market needs that can be met, given available resources.

She, however, harped on the need  for marketers to build such core competencies in an economically feasible manner and ensure they don’t outspend competitors on research and development in the process. Explaining the rationale behind the Best Marketing Student Award, the president  and Chairman of Council of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN),  Mr. Tony Agenmonmen, stated that the initiative, solely sponsored by Unilever Plc, was aimed  at discovering and  developing marketing  talents from the cradle.

The NIMN boss commended Unilever Plc, for partnering with the institute for, over one decade, in its bid at enhancing the fortunes of  marketing practice in the country.

According to him,  52 students from marketing departments of the nation’s tertiary institutions,  actually sat for the screening exercise, which were in written and oral  forms.

While Miss Ubani Chinaemerem of Covenant University emerged this year’s Best Marketing Student,  Olamilekan Abdulazeez, University of Ilorin;  Ogede Oluwatobi, Caleb University; Amusa Oluwatosin, Lagos State Polytechnic and Agber Isaac, Benue State University, emerged the first, second, third and fourth runners-up respectively.