Last week, news broke about John Boyega stepping down as brand ambassador for fragrance company, Joe Malone London, after the company reshot and recast an advert he conceived, directed and starred in with a Chinese influencer for use in Asian markets.
While Nigerian Twitter had a good laugh over how the Nigerian in Boyega jumped out in the concluding part of his statement with the sentence “I don’t have time for nonsense,” across the world, public sentiment was split.
Shopping is my guilty pleasure. Very few things get me going like the thrill of discovering new places to eat, online vendors, bookstores, etc and being able to find the item(s) in their product line that serve me best.
Two days ago, I tried to get some brownies online and went scrolling through a baker’s Instagram feed only to discover that there were over a dozen variants. As I moved from option to option, analysing each flavour with its catchy color and deliciously sounding name, I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to try and ultimately ended up exiting the page without making a purchase.
What happened?
Over the weekend, Erica, one of the most talked about housemates on the Big Brother Nigeria show had an alcohol fuelled outburst that culminated in her disqualification from the house.
While I think of myself as a passive watcher of the reality TV show, as a fan of human and consumer behaviour I was keen to see two things:
How she would handle the fallout of the nights incidents the morning after
How her team of social media handlers would control or at least contain the narrative.
The events that unfolded the morning after included an in-person apology to the housemates and a (now deleted) post on Instagram that was in equal parts apologetic and defensive.
Do I think Erica should have apologised? Yes and No.
This past week, I realised that one of the few things we all have in common is that we experience the days of the week quite similarly. Most people can’t stand Mondays. Friday is so loved, it has an entire acronym (TGIF) dedicated to it, and all the fun things are reserved for Saturdays and Sundays.
But you’re all wrong 😌. All those days are fine, but none of them is truly the best day of the week.
The best day of the week is Thursday.
Why Thursday? Because by Thursday, you are past the mid-week mark and are on the slope into the weekend. It’s the sweet spot where your week turns around, holding all the promise of the weekend. It’s humble, understated excellence.
Like days of the week, social media engagement tactics are not created equal. So I thought it’ll be interesting to reimagine some of the most popular tactics for improving online engagement as days of the week, ranking them from best to “i’d rather not.”
Every once in a while, I have life changing epiphanies.
Here’s my most recent one: after years of struggle, I have finally figured out how to eat cookies in bed without making a mess.
The trick? Break the crumbs into bite-sized pieces while they’re still in the box. Then and only then should you pop the biscuits into your mouth- allowing you a regret free snack in bed.
Like regret free cookies in bed, I break down the “Things no one tells you about being a first-time Manager” into 18 bite-sized pieces in this blogpost.
As kids, we’re obsessed with fitting in. Our deepest fears are centred around being left out and we make behavioural, fashion and even lifestyle choices to gain the approval of our peers. This continues well into our teenage years no matter how many times we hear the words “just because your friends are doing it, does not mean you should too.”
And then as we approach adulthood, almost overnight, the script flips and the most backhanded compliment you can give an adult is implying that they’re not special.
I like to think that brands are like people. At inception brands are happy just for the chance to play in the category, fulfilling the same needs that the competition does. However, as they reach maturity, in an ideal world the best brands shed their “me-too” skins in pursuit of unique brand personas.
But a quick look across industries will show you that far too many brands are failing to grow out of “me-too” marketing. Colloquially termed ‘copycat’ marketing, the “me too” strategy is as big a problem for green horn brands as it is for even the most established brand names.
Last week, there was a viral tweet about the “poor” quality of ads airing on Big Brother Nigeria. According to the poster, with all the money spent buying media placement, the brands would have done well to invest in better quality advertising.
As a marketing person with an advertising agency background, my first instinct was to strongly agree. As a conscious “anti-hearder”, my next instinct was to think “but an ad can be so bad that it becomes a cult classic and ends up actually being really good!”
