CONSUMER TRENDS

Fresh insights for brands connecting with the African consumer

By our News Team | 2022

A Covid-induced growth of the informal market may be one of the most important points to emerge from research for a new book.

Just three short years after publishing his popular book, The Villager: How Africans Consume Brands, Nigerian marketing executive Feyi Olubodun is revisiting the concept of the ‘African village’ with updated takeaways, fresh insights and a refined engagement framework for brands looking to connect with the African consumer.

He recently sat down with Strategic Marketing for Africa, the quarterly magazine of the African Marketing Confederation (AMC), to answer questions about research for his planned new book.

Feyi Olubodun, via Strategic Marketing for Africa magazine

Can you give us a peek into the marketing trends emerging from Covid?

The whole Covid experience has highlighted the stark difference between the Western world and Africa. It’s become very clear that Africa is a very communal continent, we are organised around families and households, whereas the West is around individuals, their personal pursuits and capabilities.

It is clearer to businesses now that they must engage the African consumer differently, that while the principles of marketing and doing business are the same wherever you are in the world, you’ve got to apply an African lens to the African environment, and then adapt your approaches to that.

Does this mean we shouldn’t concentrate on global trends in Africa?

There is a lot of embracing of global trends by Africans, but we are not seeing an outright embracing of or a copy-and-paste approach to Western trends and values – instead we are adapting everything we are seeing in an African fashion. This has made more clients interested in looking at things from an African point of view.

The pandemic has highlighted the impact of poverty across Africa; what does this mean for brands operating on the continent?

It has shown that Africa is still a bottom-of-the-pyramid market – in some countries the size of the informal market is as high as 70%. As a result of poverty and income, consumers are being forced to go back to the informal market to create new ways of consuming products and brands, and companies are being forced to try understand these markets and how to engage with them. The companies that are doing this really well are making good progress.

To read more of this article go to page 16 of the latest digital edition of Strategic Marketing for Africa, the official publication of the African Marketing Confederation (AMC) here: https://africanmarketingconfederation.org/strategic-marketing-for-africa/

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