ℹ️ This article first appeared on Nigeria Profiles

Let’s get to meet you.

My name is Yusuf Odukoya. I am a digital entrepreneur, brand consultant, writer, and founder of Branditechture Design Agency — the disruptive full-service branding agency based in Lekki Peninsula, Lagos, Nigeria. I have been in the design industry since 2006; that’s a decade and a half (or 15 years). However, I didn’t start offering professional services until 2011.

I dove fully into design entrepreneurship in 2014. I am a Nigerian by birth. I was born in Lagos, Nigeria. My state of Origin is Ogun. Both my parents originated from Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State.

I studied Parasitic Zoology (A.K.A Parasitology) at the prestigious University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria.

How did the idea for your business come about?

Growing up, I was a very intelligent kid who would pass exams without having to cram class notes. I took this same idea with me to the university, but I was met with a different reality. It dawned upon me that I wouldn’t be getting away with a First-Class degree. “Why would I give up?” I said to myself. “There is more to life than the four walls of the university and its entire system.”

I cried at different points during my undergraduate years at UNILAG, but two years into my degree program, I said “you know what? Let me try something else with what I already have”, referring to my graphic design skills and business acumen. That was how I founded Schwartz Bacher Systems in November 2014.

From Schwartz Bacher to Branditechture

In January 2020, Schwartz Bacher Systems underwent a complete rebrand to become Branditechture Design Agency, which was immediately registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission in Nigeria. Thankfully, the drastic change has brought about much more success ever since.

What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?

I did not like where and how I grew up. A lot of things went the wrong way financially for my parents. My dad, all he had was plans for me, but he managed to turn only a few into reality. Such a great man. He threw himself up and down for me until he had nothing left to spend.

My mum too was no different. She’s a well-known Fashion Designer in her area. I miss when people call me “Omo Kalat” as a kid (Kalat is her business name). I think I got all my entrepreneurial tendencies and ginger from her. She made a lot of sacrifices. She saved up enough from her meager income to get me my first and second laptops.

Luckily for me, despite my parents’ socioeconomic status, I went to the best schools around, and they also managed to enroll me in a computer school at a very young age. That is how I came about Design, which effectively set me on the path to becoming the design entrepreneur that I am today.

How did you come up with the name for your company?

Branditechture was actually a mashup of three words; Branding, Tech, and Architecture.

It took approximately two months of both active and passive brainstorming to get the name. Really, it was a tough one because it would be a name that I would never change, ever! It is a name I was willing to cast on stone.

The revelation finally came in a rather odd place — the toilet. You know, that Eureka feeling.

The next thing I did was to quickly check all major social media platforms to see if the name has already been taken by someone else, but it hadn’t. I also checked if the .com domain TLD is available for me, and it was. Even a Gmail username was also available. That was when I knew that this is the new name for my business.

How did you raise funding for your venture?

My business is self-funded. I self-raised the funding capital after many months of working as a full-time in-house graphic and web designer, freelancer, tech support staff, and training facilitator.

The funding capital majorly went into the purchase of space, furniture, equipment, and software subscriptions.

Yusuf Odukoya at Alliance Française de Lagos, Mike Adenuga Center, Ikoyi.

It didn’t require much liquid cash to maintain and grow because it is what I do, eat and wear. It has been so easy for me, and I still have a lot of gas to burn.

How do you build a successful customer base?

I have spent less than 50 US Dollars on paid advertisement since starting Branditechture in 2014. You will rarely ever see me post a direct advertisement anywhere on the internet and when I do, it is always as a subtle communication. We acquire customers by sharing helpful tips & resources on our website’s blog, SEO, and giving clients first-hand advice and information on how to get the best out of our services.

I also developed another website called Small Business Blog, which is aimed at helping Nigerian Small Business owners generate more revenue by providing tips that can help nurture their small business into the next big thing.

Branditechture has thrived on brand evangelism (A.K.A Word-of-mouth referrals from existing clients) to build its customer base.

How do you market your business, and which tactics have been most successful?

I do very little marketing and more brand positioning. And with world-class service delivery and customer support, I have been able to engage with my customers on a very deep level. As mentioned previously, my business website even has a blog section that is well updated with highly relevant information and helpful resources, plus a separate website called “Branditechture Client Help Center”, which is fully focused on client support.

No disrespect, but our client support and onboarding processes are lightyears ahead of most of the biggest branding agencies in Nigeria.

In summary, as of now, I do not advertise, I just position my brand as an industry leader.

Can you describe/outline your typical day?

I sleep very late at night and wake up as early as 4 A.M. I have an irregular sleeping pattern so there are days  I end up sleeping as late as 4 A.M. My typical day goes thus;

1. Wake up, pray and log on to my laptop to check where I left off the previous day.
2. Grooming and breakfast
3. Back to pressing my laptop (executing some client projects, liaising with clients, browsing social media, and doing some administrative and project management tasks with my team, e.t.c.)
4. Sleep off

How has being an entrepreneur affected your family life?

Being an entrepreneur has given me absolute control of my time and finances. Besides being able to work from any location due to the nature of my job, I can also decide to take a day or two off and spend some time with my family. I’d say that it has affected my family life positively.

What motivates you?

People who have an insatiable hunger for success like Elon Musk, Bill Gates e.t.c motivate me a lot. They’ve also taught me not to accept mediocrity in any form. My biggest motivation comes from Elon.

How do you generate new ideas?

Apart from inspirations from real-life experiences and tech-related support requests from my clients, I do keyword research. I also use Pinterest for visual conceptions.

What is your greatest fear as an entrepreneur, and how do you manage it?

I do not have a single fear as an entrepreneur. I am rather always eager to face new challenges because I believe there’s always a reward for overcoming every single challenge that life throws at you.

What are your ideals?

Yusuf giving lectures at a Facebook-sponsored event titled Kinetic — The Design Journey

Building communities with people of similar business interests, mutual respect and solidarity in the workplace, having an agile team, harnessing renewable (green) energy, the reality of uninterrupted power supply in developing countries like Nigeria, and sharing my experiences.

You might be interested in my Facebook WordPress Group, BWWWY.

How do you define success?

I measure success by the amount of positive impact someone has made in their community — both online and offline.

Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?

Yes. Consistently trying out new businesses or business strategies and comparing their outcomes until you find that your “divine core purpose”. Most of the successful entrepreneurs that I know have tried out more than two businesses in their lifetime.

What is your favourite aspect of being an entrepreneur?

The ability to take control of my schedule and finances.

What has been your most satisfying moment in business?

Getting testimonies, 5-star reviews, and recommendations from my colleagues and clients gives me some sort of satisfying aura, but it usually doesn’t last long.

What piece of advice would you give to college graduates who want to become entrepreneurs?

Strive to work in an organization first before starting your own venture, the professional experience you will get by so doing is massive. Many people aren’t designed for the regular 9-5 but never quit your 9-5 job for being an entrepreneur if you do not have an existing client base.

If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?

I don’t think I would do anything differently, neither do I marvel at the chance to start my career all over again. I took all the right decisions and I never made any devastating mistake. I might not be this lucky if I started my career all over again. No regrets for me, so I am very fine.

What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?

Doggedness, Interpersonal Skills, and Leadership.

What entrepreneurial tricks have you discovered to keep you focused and productive in your day-to-day busy schedule?

Motivating my team with words of encouragement, being realistic about what my expectations are, and planning and executing business strategies that put my brand on several levels ahead of current industry leaders.

What key activities would you recommend entrepreneurs invest their time in?

Blogging about their journey, sharing useful resources, contributing insightful content to online communities, and spending some quality time with their family.

The post An Open Interview With Yusuf, Owner of Branditechture appeared first on Branditechture.

If you live in America but haven’t seen Mike Tyson’s new cannabis company, Tyson 2.0, you would very much likely start seeing them soon, all thanks to the brand’s newly-appointed chief marketing officer, Jackie Guarini.

Guarini is saddled with the responsibility of developing and directing the strategy and operations for Mike Tyson’s cannabis brand, which launched in October 2021.

Guarini is quite abreast with the vice industries. She was previously serving as the US head of commerce media at Anheuser-Busch, where she built the company’s first connected commerce strategy — which brought together marketing and advertising, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer (DTC) programs.  She also led the organization’s social, programmatic and connected TV strategies.

She’s now bringing her love for media innovation and consumer needs to the cannabis industry. In a recent interview with The Drum, she spoke extensively about using her new role to build brand awareness for Tyson 2.0, her vision for growing direct-to-consumer cannabis operations, and the future of the global cannabis industry.

Q: It’s clear that there are plenty of similarities between the alcohol and cannabis markets. But what specifically drew you to the cannabis space and to Tyson 2.0?

With alcohol, there’s a huge transfer of the same types of issues and also pros that you have. It’s a very highly regulated industry.

Selling direct-to-consumer is extremely difficult. And it’s a challenge, but it’s something that I believe [is growing]. We’re part of this big green wave.

Q: [There is so much to parse, including] understanding the commerce between different state lines and how you sell in-store versus online. How do you connect with consumers and make products that address their different needs for different occasions?

I really think that cannabis and plant medicine, in general, are really, really important. It’s kind of the future. It’s really helped me in my own ways, personally, to overcome anxiety issues and insomnia issues. It has profoundly changed my life in a very positive way.

So for me, it was kind of that lightning-in-the-bottle moment where I was like, ‘Wow, I can really integrate my personal and my professional life and my values together.’ It’s kind of a dream job for me. And I’m really grateful for that transition.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you anticipate facing in your new role and how will you approach them?

Three big goals come to mind [for my new role]: consistency, strong brand identity and direct-to-consumer experiences.

A large part of what I’m going to be doing is making sure that we have the consistency of our brand across the state lines — so whether you go to California, or Arizona or New York, you’re seeing, like, oh my god, yes, that’s the Tyson product.

‘I love it, it feels good in my hand, it’s an amazing experience to smoke it’ — it’s getting that kind of consistency from product to packaging. Also [I’m considering] in-store retail merchandising and making sure that that’s consistent across all the different brick-and-mortar stores and dispensaries.

I’ll be coming up with a standard process of how we show up and turn up the heat there and [mastering] the look and feel so that when consumers walk into our dispensary, we’re immersing them in the brand with beautiful, elevated displays to grab their attention to drive sales. I’ll be working with the dispensaries on that and ensuring that everything is up to the standard of excellence that we’re looking for.

The other big part of being highly regulated is direct-to-consumer and how that works. It’s such an important piece for us to build out in California right now. In California, we can sell direct-to-consumer through our website and our new app, which is great.

We’ve been working really hard on developing a strong platform for consumers to easily browse and purchase their favourite Tyson 2.0 products in a matter of seconds on their phone and get that order fulfilled. So for me, that’s also a big challenge.

It’s like, how do we start replicating that [model] across other states, and making sure that consumers can have a very seamless and easy experience from literally clicking on their phone and getting it delivered to their house in a matter of minutes, or using other DTC partner like Weedmaps? We’re making sure that we’re working with these aggregated marketplaces in a compliant way while giving consumers access to our products.

Q: Can you spell out your high-level vision for the brand?

I also really want to focus on consumer trends. That’s part of why, in my media career, I absolutely loved media innovation — because I was hyper-focused on what consumers want and need and how they’re consuming media and how they’re consuming products and the what’s the next, best thing. I want to make sure that we’re creating products to match those trends.

From a marketing standpoint, our connection to consumers and their love for the brand is really what’s going to drive our strategy. There’s a very strong human connection to Mike [Tyson] with this brand, and that’s something I definitely want to leverage. I want people to feel like they’re part of what we call the ‘Tyson tribe.’

Something that’s really important to me is ensuring that we’re meeting consumers where they are, in whatever occasion that they find themselves in. Whether it’s relaxing at home, hanging with friends or attending a concert, we should have a product to make that experience feel really great.

Evoking that sort of joy and nostalgia is something that I’m really interested in. I think [in the long-term], Tyson 2.0 is going to be a portfolio of brands and it’s going to cover a wide spectrum of consumers.

An integral piece of that strategy is developing the house of brands within Tyson 2.0 by acquiring more IPs — with that, we’ll be able to reach more audiences with different and fun products that meet their needs and things that they want to buy and share with their communities.

I want to make sure that we’re delivering there, and I want to grow our product lines into new territories that are unexpected and definitely can bring a social buzz factor [because] word-of-mouth is everything in cannabis.

Q: In such a highly-regulated industry, what does advertising look like? Are you buying media?

I’m super excited about learning all of the different regulatory and compliance laws that we need to focus on to make sure that we’re showing up right and showing up in a legal way. You can definitely purchase media, which is great.

We’re using a partner called Fyllo, of which our chairman is the CEO. They’re an amazing company in the cannabis space to help do managed-service media buys for us in targeted markets and ensure that we’re using really rich cannabis purchase data or progressive audience data to reach the consumers where they are — whether it’s on digital, out-of-home or otherwise.

We are limited to a degree. We’re just starting to see connected TV ads here in New York trying to educate consumers on what [the laws are] and when [they’re] coming and preparing them for that with all the questions that will come. But then there are other states like California, where you can see billboards for dispensaries and you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s amazing.’

I definitely want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of that… and addressing our immediate media needs, which would be like brand awareness kind of campaigns, and then hopefully, lower-funnel [media priorities] would be more [work with] our DTC partners like Weedmaps and Jane.

Q: What’s next for Tyson 2.0?

We’re actually going to be launching our CBD line with one of our partners over the next month, so that’ll allow us to have CBD products across the country nationally; that kind of enables us to have more direct consumer experiences, because CBD is not as regulated. I’m really excited to have our products be accessible to everybody.

In the next few weeks, we’re also going to be launching some more of our edible line, which will be like chocolates and lollipops, which I’m super excited about. We’re also going to be dropping our Ric Flair Drip line, so any 80s and 90s wrestling fans will be super stoked about what’s to come there. I’m personally really excited about that, too.

We’re also going to be focusing a ton on merchandising — building out new revenue streams for the brand outside of just cannabis. [That will entail] creating clothing lines, houseware lines and consumer products that can help enhance your experience as you’re utilizing our products.

My top priority is still going to be the cohesion of the brand and making it feel consistent to consumers. I want to make sure that our social strategy also continues to grow — we’re almost at 100,000 followers, which is amazing in seven months organically.

Q: Any predictions for the future of the cannabis industry at large?

I hope that my coming into this role will kind of shake up the industry a little bit and make room for more female types of products and different perspectives.

I’m really excited to be a part of that, and it’s not lost on me. I think the cannabis industry is going to continue to foster a more inclusive environment for women coming into these roles. That’s something I would definitely predict over the next few years: you’re going to see a lot more females in senior leadership and C-suite positions, which I’m excited about.

The post CMO of Mike Tyson’s Cannabis Brand, Tyson 2.0 Reveals Plans to Take the Brand Higher appeared first on Branditechture.

Brands are increasingly looking for high-quality audience intelligence to help them drive forward their international campaign planning. However, there is a rising dissatisfaction alongside this demand, which is that reliable, rich, and cost-effective customer data isn’t available in one location to achieve this.

Mastercard’s chief marketing officer and president of the World Federation of Advertisers, Raja Rajamannar, says in a recent interview with The Drum, “if you go out and spray advertisement and pray that people will respond, or that they will connect, that’s very inefficient for the marketers and annoying and irrelevant to the customers.

Yougov Logo

YouGov has launched the Global Profiles  to address this advertiser demand need. The new dataset aids businesses and their agency partners understand their global audiences. The Global Profiles Tool includes over 1,000 questions asked of respondents in 43 global markets, and provides a consistent picture of people’s views, sentiments, behaviors, and habits, allowing targeted campaigns and partnerships to have a greater impact across all media channels.

In a tough world where media consumption is shifting and people’s perspectives are becoming more complex, Julian Newby, global sector head of agencies and media at YouGov, discusses how businesses can acquire a deeper, broader understanding of their audiences across global markets.

With the debut of the Global Profiles Tool, how are you satisfying the needs of brands?

The feedback we’ve been getting is that there’s a lot of frustration in the marketplace due to the thinness of the global dataset available. Now we are offering something that will help to alleviate a lot of that frustration.

According to our agency partners, they love Profiles, our local market product, but found multi-market analysis more difficult. So we took a thousand questions, made them globally uniform where possible, and has everyone answer them to create a fully-squared dataset.

What does the product add to the market that isn’t already there?

We took those thousand questions and turned them into a single product that is updated quarterly, has its own dashboard and interface, and is available in 43 countries. It’s large in comparison to previous offerings – three to four times the number of questions as the next rival using a completely global dataset.

People used to have a lot of options, but they didn’t have a lot of depth. We have a lot to give here. With what came previously, it was tough to obtain any insight, but this is big enough – you’ve got all the attitudinal questions, together with more than 150 pretty robust media questions.

Could you elaborate on the scope of these audience questions?

It is particularly strong in two areas. The first is attitudinal statements, which you’ll need to create sophisticated segmentations. Global Profiles has over 700 of them, covering everything from electric automobiles to the latest technology, travel, entertainment, and the environment.

Then there’s the question of media consumption, which we’ve fully overhauled. We collaborated closely with some of the major outlets to cover all of the major channels, as well as newer ones like music streaming and podcasts, and to raise tough questions about social media. We looked at key indicators including frequency, recency, and time spent across all channels, as well as device and format usage.

Will this have an impact on local markets as well?

Absolutely, one of the most intriguing aspects is that the respondents are also the backbone of our local markets. So if I’m a global marketer or an agency person generating an audience and audience and writing a beautiful multi-market strategy, which this tool is ideal for, I can then provide that exact audience to my local markets and they can copy it exactly since the dataset is the same.

Local markets may then combine it with the massive volumes of data in local profiled to give it texture and strength, feeding into the granularity of the publication, TV shows, and social media that people consume. That’s a very strong aspect.

The quality of customer data provided is a hot topic in the industry. What steps have you made to improve the quality of your work?

Any survey that takes more than 16 minutes to complete has a significant decline in respondent number and quality. So, in a YouGov-style manner, we’ve divided the questions into a total of 11, 15-minutes surveys. To be included in the dataset, people must answer all 11 questions, however, our method ensures that we obtain as many as possible completed with high quality as a metric.

Furthermore, having and maintaining a research panel of over 17 million people gives us a significant edge because we can devote a significant amount of time and effort to producing a high-quality product. In my opinion, no one else could have done this as well as YouGov has in terms of quality and care we’ve taken.

Global Profiles was also created in collaboration with our large agency partners, who have really helped to construct it in such a way that it might be highly valuable to them.

Finally, how are you making the Global Profiles Tool available to agencies and advertisers? Have you innovated in any way?

We normally sell to our local markets on an enterprise level. If you purchase Profiles as a client, you will only have to pay once, and everyone in your organization will be able to use it. However, with Global Profiles, we’re selling by the seat, if you buy a minimum of five, you can put them anywhere in the world. That’s a departure from our usual model which is more flexible and cost-effective, and it suits the need of global planning units within agencies and brands, which often operate out of two or three global hubs.

The post YouGov’s Global Profiles Can Help You Gain Deeper Understanding Of Your Global Audience appeared first on Branditechture.