Business owners, industry captains and brand custodians, desirous of staying relevant and enhancing their companies’ bottom-lines have been charged to reinvent their businesses to enable such businesses take advantage of newer and fresher opportunities, induced by technology advancements.
Making the charge in Lagos, recently, at the 2022 Annual Marketing Conference, organised by the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), the experts, cut across the different sectors of the nation’s Integrated Marketing Communications space, described it as ‘becoming increasingly dangerous’ for business owners to continue to stay glued to old business models, in a rapidly changing, tech-induced space.
Speaking on the theme, ‘Driving Business Sustainability in The Age of Data and Technology’, the Keynote Speaker and Chief Executive Officer, Axiom Intel, Mr. Kola Oyeyemi, stated that the traditional belief that the advent of technology would improve the lives of many at the expense of ‘a smaller few’, is being questioned. Tech advancements, he argued, have continued to take its toll on many businesses, due to the failure of those businesses to take advantage of the benefits inherent in such techs.
Oyeyemi, therefore, argued that with the explosion in data and very aggressively disruptive technologies, it has become imperative for business sustainability to be discussed from the perspective of performance fundamentals.
Describing as ‘unsettling’, the issue of disruptive technologies, the former General Manager, Consumer Marketing, MTN Nigeria, noted that while technology can enhance operational and financial efficiencies, it can also accelerate a business’ decline and extinctions, if not taken advantage of.
“This is like riding a wild tiger. Any error can be very fatal. Technology can help you drive operational and financial efficiencies. However, technology can also accelerate your extinction,” he stated.
Oyeyemi also cautioned that such disruption it might cause businesses might not necessarily be through intra-business competition, but as ‘a barbarian from outside’ the industry.
Using the advent of Smartphone technology and its attendant disruptions, as an example, he argued that the introduction of the first smart-phone device by IBM in 1992, and the advent of internet, had permanently made smart-phone change the face of business and personal interactions.
“This is one of the most visible examples of Creative Destruction. The smart-phone took mobility of life and business to a whole new level and created a convergence of industries into this powerful device,” he added.
According to the former President of the Advertisers’ Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), the convergence had led to the premature death or a mutation of a lot of industries, with over 14 classic industries changed, or being changed by the Smartphone.
Some of the industries affected, he stated, include: Music Production and Distribution, Video Production and Distribution, Banking, Insurance, Watch, Print Production, Broadcast, Gaming, Retail Brick and Mortar channels, among others.
The renowned marketing practitioner attributed such disruption to the fact that technologies have no regard for extant rules of engagement or the old factors of competitive advantage.
“They are barbarians who have pulled down old structures and systems and created a whole new frame for competitiveness beyond industries,” he stated.
Oyeyemi therefore charged business owners to be wary of organizational rigidity, since such strategy impairs innovation and ecosystem thinking, and could therefore lead to the extinction of businesses.
In her contribution, the Marketing Coordinator, Allied Foods (Burger King), and one of the panelists at the conference, Joyce Ibukun Adeyemo harped on the need for marketing practitioners in the country to take disruptive marketing, seriously.
“This is because it helps you refreshen your products in the eye of your customer, and creatively give you a competitive advantage,” she stated.
Also speaking at the event, the President and Chairman of Council, NIMN, Mr. Idorenyen Enang, described the conference as a platform for stakeholders in the nation’s marketing space to exchange ideas.
He explained that the decision to honour 17 prominent practitioners, some of them drawn from sister professional bodies, with the fellowship of the marketing institute, was a way of further enhancing the practice and collaborating with sister professional bodies, with the aim of bringing more benefits to its members.
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