Immanuel Kant and Business Strategy: why you need to be a critical thinker in business

Of recent I took up an interest in a German philosopher of the late 18th century: Immanuel Kant. His much acclaimed paper; "what is enligthenment?" is a beautiful piece encouraging readers to think for themselves. I found this particular excerpt beautiful and pertinent:

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity
is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.
This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but
lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The
motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own
understanding!"

I had a lively discussion with an acquaintance on critique yesterday. It was actually about whether we need critique at all? And I believe "yes" and a big one at that. We need critique everywhere. Critique is what makes the world a better place. Critique makes new and better products and critique is definitely a key component of business success. Critique provides you with great questions and makes you:

• A better business thinker: what if?
• A better innovator: how about?
• And a better designer: why not?

I think as I explain below you need those question to build great companies, products and services.

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Customer-centricity: How understanding and solving the specific problems of your customers will gradually turn you into a market leader

By Patrick Mayoh

You should stop thinking about your company in terms of the product or service you sell. Rather your company serves specific customers' needs or problems. I think company that are customer centric rather than product-centric have more competitive edge. You don't want to be perceived as an organization that tries to get people to buy your stuffs but as a problem solver or a place where people's problems are truly understood and solved. 

I have thought about a matrix that you can use as a starting point to develop, improve or bring new products to your market. It is applicable to all business settings and all types of customers. It helps you:

• Define a problem (what are your customers facing: how, when, where)
• Identify current solutions to the problem (who is helping them or what are they doing themselves already)
• And bring in your solutions (what is not right with what they are doing and how are you helping them)

 I have been working as a chief strategy officer for Auracameroon a water-solutions company in Cameroon. Developping and using this framework has been very instrumental for the job I have to do.

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By 2040 most African Countries will be middle class: Five things you can do from today to successfully establish your business by 2040 on the continent

By Patrick Mayoh

Carlos Lopez, current UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), believes most African nations will be middle-class by 2040. Assuming this is true, and I don't have any reason to believe it is not. I think there are 5 things you can start doing today as a multinational or local comapny or as an entrepreneur to make sure you succeed in Africa.

Target the youth

Half of the youth population by 2040 will be from Africa. So think about the different ways you can learn about the youth population, namely their tastes, aspirations and needs. Think about products or services that will tap into their wishes and connect with them. Sponsor youth-related events and causes and make yourself visible, get to be known among them. Many of them today might not actually have the money to buy what you sell but by being visible, I am sure they will remember you when they have some money to spend.

Build Brand Loyalty

This sounds a bit similar to the first point. But what I mean here is, as a company still appealing to customers and consumers from other geographies, think about how you can appeal to African customers. Tailor your products, services and offerings to their context. Be customer-centric rather than product centric, if you don't understand the difference, read this article. Some brands are thinking along this line. This article on Heinekenn's strategy for Africa is a good example of what I am talking about here (sorry it is in french).

Plan your market-entry

 Africa is not a country. It is a collection of diverse nations and consumers, so although culturally you might find many similarities you will also be faced with a lot of differences. People in Lagos in Nigeria and Douala in Cameroon have different needs. So in planning to enter the African market be careful not to focus on the whole continent but think in terms of cities or neighborhoods in cities. Income levels vary from one country to another. You have many entry strategies. You can either commit by investing in R&D or reconfigure the value chain for your products, or do some judo economics or niche strategy, depending on the size of your firm.

Get to know the African Consumer

 Reinaldo Fiorini and Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah from Mc Kinsey and Company believe Africans are hopeful and aspirational.  Armed with this kind of information, there is a lot you can do to capitalize on the optimism of Africa. For example think about products and services that reflect that state of mind and do some more research to deepen your understanding of the customer segment you aim to serve in Africa.

Buy a stake or work for a company with operations in Africa

If you are truly serious about building a successful business in Africa, then work in a company with operations in Africa. This will increase your understanding of how to succeed there and will provide you with some idea about the African consumer. If you have some money buy a stake in an African Company that you can plan to buy later depending on your plans.

Do you know other ways to plan for the African market?

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at Aura Cameroon.

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Building Brand Loyalty: Authenticity Marketing!

By Patrick Mayoh

I watched a fascinating ted talk a couple of days ago by Joseph Pine, author of the Experience Economy and Authenticity: what consumers really want. The economy according to him has gone through three stages. Starting as a commodity-based system, the world with the industrial revolution moved to a goods-based economy and later on to a service-based economy. What we are now going through is the age of authenticity. An age of mass-customization where consumers want to be treated uniquely.

Companies that want to sell in the 21st century have to be true to themselves and true to customers. This has always seemed to be the case, but I feel this is even truer today than never before in history. As Jeff Bezos famously said: 

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

In an age of global digitalisation, customers everywhere want more, expect more and look for more honest companies...more authentic ones.

Being true to yourself

This is all about what you stand for. You don't want your business to be out there just to make sales,  but you want to be identifiable, to be associated with certain values and principles. Think "connectedness" and facebook comes to mind or "innovation" and all you think of is Apple or "fantasy" for Disney. All your products and services are built around your identity, your customers relate to your identity and expect you to stay true to what you proclaim to be as an organization. So in case you still find yourself floundering not actually sure why you are in market, think again!

Being true to customers

I came across this article about companies that engage in predatory marketing activities to stop mothers from breastfeeding their children in order to buy their formula. The World Health Organization strongly recommends mothers breastfeed new infants for 6 months, arguing this is beneficial for the I.Q and the brain development of a new born; that some companies would have none of this, and invest tons of money in marketing to persuade mothers to buy their baby formular is a case of companies not being true to customers. What happens when the mothers actually find out? 

Or think about this campaign launched by one skin care company with offices in Cameroon and Gabon, marketing a lotion that can turn dark skin into a fairer type as if to stay dark African skin is not attractive.  Those are just a few examples of companies that are out to sell products and services. 

But this is not enough today. Companies that want to sell today will have to be honest and mindful of what consumers truly want to experience and how they can fulfill that need without having to lie about what they can do.

Be it in Africa or elsewhere, I think it is time to tailor our offerings, products and services to the identities of our respective organisations and the aspirations of our consumer-segments all in an honest and authentic brand strategy. 

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at Aura Cameroon 

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Nigeria: A vivid picture of what African Countries should do to achieve full economic prosperity

By Patrick Mayoh

I really struggled to find this title and I am sure I could have come up with a better one. What exactly do I mean by full economic prosperity? The fastest growing economies are in Africa and some African nations are expected to grow by 7% or higher as they have done over most of the past decade. But GDP growth is not enough. As long as people do not feel the benefits of a growing economy, GDP growth by itself does not make much of a difference, except on paper. The Boston Consulting Group recently unveiled a very interesting framework for measuring well-being in a nation. Bhutan relies on a gross national hapiness index as a better way to gauge the economic well-being of its citizens.

Nigeria is a good case in point for that matter. It has a fast growing GDP, 44% of the population are under 15 (auguring a good population dividend) and it has abundant oil reserves. Nigeria is expected to have a GDP growth of 7% this year and draws a lot of interest from investors and foreign multinationals. Yet according to this article from the financial times the poverty rate is still 63%  and youth unemployment stands at 37% while unemployment overall stands at 24%. As with many African nations there is great potential and numerous opportunities, but people are yet to benefit.

I believe leaders should think about educating our young people. This should not just be about building more schools, or increasing the literacy rates, but more about providing the skills that are needed for our economies to compete in the 21st  century. Moreover I think our Governments should invest in the kind of infrastructure that will attract and retain investors. Power cuts are prevalent in Nigeria as in most of Africa, how do we hope to attract FDIs with that? Lastly we need our Governments to be staffed with people of integrity, corruption is reportedly endemic in the Nigerian society as in many African countries. I hope the elections in 2015 in Nigeria will provide leaders with vision, and leaders that will tackle the boko haram, the poverty and the education issues efficiently. And I hope this will be an inspiration for other African countries.

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at aura cameroon

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We all know Africa is changing and so what?

By Patrick Mayoh

I just read another one of those typical articles on Africa. By typical, I mean one article praising the growing economy, potentials and positive outlook of the continent. Many of those are being written nowadays and you can hardly spend a day without reading about another piece on the prowesses of the continent. 

I used to enjoy reading those ( I actually created this blog to highlight the many changes happening on the African Continent) and I still do, but I feel we need to change the nature of the conversation on Africa. It is all exciting to know the Economist does not refer to Africa as the hopeless continent anymore, but as a continent that is rising. It is flattering to witness how Wall Street and other stock markets are all getting excited about Africa. Now that Growth figures have reached a tipping point in Asia, it feels good to know that investors are now turning to Africa for economic opportunities.

Still one has to be cautious here. I am very optimistic about the prospects of Africa, but I know many Africans are yet to enjoy the fruits of economic growth in their respective economies. I know we lack basic infrastructure on a massive scale, I am aware of the fact that we need more educated leaders and I know poverty despite the rising middle class is still rampant. Therefore I believe in changing the nature of our conversation.

Let us look at the countries that are doing extremely well economically like Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola and to a certain extent Nigeria and as thinkers let us write on how we can replicate what they are doing elsewhere on the continent. Let us not highlight only success stories but let us think about how these success stories can benefit other countries that are still lagging behind economically. I actually wrote an article on how other African Countries could replicate the success story of Rwanda.

Let us write about educating our leaders and about providing the right skills to our graduates. Let us write about how we can stop the brain drain and why we should get our best brains back from wherever they are so the can help develop the continent.

I am excited things are improving on the continent and I can see that, but I would like the conversation on Africa to shift on how we can make this happen even quicker and on a more massive scale. Africa is still the poorest continent anyway, so getting all excited about changes is good but thinking on how we can accelerate this is even much better.

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at aura cameroon

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Content is everything nowadays

 By Patrick Mayoh

Slideshare is a great tool for learning about trendy subjects, be it marketing, business or economics to name just a few of these. I happened to have gone through a series of presentations on content marketing. Traditional ways of advertising products and services are fading out and creating engaging and relevant content for your target audience is the new way of generating leads and eventually getting people really interested in what you sell. 

As it is the case with technology, the effects are pervasive, affecting companies all over the world. Whether you are a marketing manager in a developed or emerging economy there are statistics you can't just afford to overlook. In this post I am going to share three things (although there are many more things to say on the topic) I have learned so far from reading about content marketing and how it will change the way we advertise and market our products in the coming years.

9 out of 10 Organisations market with content

This is a data from the content marketing institute, and I am not sure the study is representative of marketing strategies worldwide. Still, what the data tells is, more and more Marketing managers are increasingly rejecting old marketing tactics to focus on content marketing instead. The content marketing institute define content marketing as:

"Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action."

It is in a nutshell the art of selling without giving that impression. Traditional marketing techniques including tv and magazine ads and billboards or Internet pop-ups pitch information about products and most of the times this is annoying for you and me. Who does not switch between channels to avoid sitting through commercials? With content marketing your aim is to create a video, write a blogpost or share a link that inform your customers and help them make clever decisions about their purchases or the kind of producs or services they should buy. 

Blogs are 63% more likely to influence purchase decisions

Your company should have a blog. Blogposts about your products or services indicate you know about your area of expertise. Blogposts tell your customers you want to make them more intelligent and blogposts tell your clients you are interested not so much about selling but about truly helping your customers understand how your company as a whole makes a difference. Blogposts finally are an indication you are a customer-centric organisation (you should better be) rather than a product-centric one, because you write about how your product or service help customers improve their lives

Customers who receive email marketing spend 83% more when shopping

It is time for your marketing department to formulate an email marketing strategy. Make it a goal to send an email to customers about an issue your organisation cares about or a problem you are solving. If you are a health care company send an email about the need to exercise and to remain fit for example. Let your customers know you know your stuff and interact with them on a regular basis to showcase your expertise and knowledge of your business sector.

Again as I said in the beginning, new analytics emerge everyday about content marketing and marketers are only beginning to realise the key to effectively using content marketing. For more information on the topic I recommend these two slideshare presentations:

1. http://fr.slideshare.net/BlogGrowth/18-useful-internet-marketing-statistics-that-you-cant-ignore

2. http://fr.slideshare.net/NewsCred/50-best-stats-presentation

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at Aura Cameroon

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