Timaya was crying.
In front of 20,000 people, at the Joseph Yobo Mini Stadium in Port Harcourt,
Timaya, the strident, swaggering dancehall superstar, bent his knees and shed
some tears.
Naturally, some
people thought such a sudden outpour of emotions was unseemly for someone of
Timaya’s stature. To many others, however, it was just the perfect treat. Crying
in front of thousands of fans who have come to watch you entertain them was
special gift, they reckon. It’s nothing to be embarrassed by at all.
Can you guess who else
felt special after the show? Legend Extra Stout. The event in question was the
Port Harcourt edition of Real Deal Experience, which is a series of consumer concerts
produced by Legend, the 7.5% ABV Extra Stout from Nigerian Breweries. Timaya’s
stunt on this particular night became the icing on an already good cake for
Legend, and it made the stories from that gig even more sharable.
These stories are
about being unpretentious. The beer brand has come a long way from those
hard-core leather-jacket-slinging ads it used to run on TV. These days, it looks
like it is embracing its growing popularity among an aspiring urban crowd whose
reality is anything but fake.
Legend is doing
less of the macho club swashbuckling it tried so hard to own before, and more
of a down-to-earth ‘Original Naija’ tone of voice. This may be because another
brand, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout already does something not so different
from that but what’s currently good for Legend is the fact that public
reactions to its new strategy suggest that its advertising campaign, the Real
Deal Experience concerts, and other properties in the mix are making the
desired impact on the intended audience.
It is one of the reasons the Timaya
Tears of Port Harcourt were significant.
Timaya, you see,
was not making a mess of himself in front of total strangers. He was at home
with his own people and sharing his unfettered emotions with them was a way of
showing them how much he trusted them and how grateful he was to them. Indeed
we’re talking about a great crowd here, not a handful of close neighbours but
those are the words he used.
"I always love
performing in Port Harcourt,” he said after the show. “It brings back so many
memories and the crowd tonight was spectacular. They made me feel at home.
Almost like I never left.”
His success, he explained,
could be credited to Port Harcourt. It is the “town most instrumental in
shaping my early days,” he said and promised to “give my people everything they
want and more. If I don't do this for them, who else would I do it for?”
As he said that,
the crowd cheered him on and that was the moment that Legend won the evening. Even
if the brand had paid for a night to remember, it couldn’t have engineered this
priceless outcome. The star and his fans were in harmony. Legend could simply take
that night, stick its logo on it and run it as an ad.
“The Real Deal Experience is about making people appreciate realness
and authenticity. Bringing fans face to face with one of their favourite music
superstar is a very engaging way of putting across this message,” said Oluseun
Lawal, brand manager, Legend.
The concerts have now held in four locations: Lagos, featuring Oritsefemi
at Okokomaiko; Onitsha featuring Kcee at Ekwulobia Township Stadium; Port
Harcourt starring Timaya at the Joseph Yobo Mini Stadium; and Ibadan headlined
by 9ice at Cultural Centre, Mokola. At each of the venues, the ravers and
performers appeared to be relating like old friends.
The brand managers insist that such connection was what they were going
for. The concerts are not about organising perfunctory events, they say, it is
about finding what consumers really enjoy and serving it to them. This is why
Legend Extra Stout is not collecting all of Nigeria’s biggest stars for the
concerts, but is selecting only the artistes that are genuinely appreciated in
the neighbourhoods on the Real Deal Experience tour map.
The concerts are intended to evolve into an event for genuine human connections,
says Lawal. Good for him, because, as the pictures and concertgoer behaviour at
the parties show, Legend seems to have struck that emotional branding gold.
As it turns out, emotional branding is the holy grail of marketing because
consumers rarely forget the experiences they have with a brand. If that
experience is favourable, the product benefits.
“Brands must
recognise that their emotional identity is not only a result of ads and
products, but also corporate policy and stances. The message can be sent in
subtle ways…. The key components are inclusivity, sophistication, and
subtlety,” says Marc Gobe, writing in Emotional
Branding: The Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People. He argues that emotional
branding helps to capture hearts and minds.
In Legend’s case, both the brand
ambassadors and the consumers are having a similar reaction to the production.
"Tonight is very
special for me because I've come here to my street roots in Lagos to perform,”
said Oritsefemi, after his affecting performance in Okokomaiko. “I want to give
a special shout out to Legend for connecting me back to my people."
When Kcee was done in Onitsha he said, “Tonight is
the most fun I've had onstage in a long time. It was really nice to come back
here to the East and make my fans happy. I really hope to come back and do this
again later."
And, of course, Timaya broke down in
tears in Port Harcourt.
As he was on his knees saying a prayer
for his fans, one of them, a self-confessed day-one supporter, beamed at the
reporters standing nearby. The fan’s name is Michael Odon, an NURTW
representative. Before Timaya became famous, Odon said proudly, “I bought him
his first [leather] slippers.”
Oh well. That effectively proves that
Timaya was at home, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, Legend continues to organise
these concerts, padding them with free cold drinks and a game show where
customers win refrigerators, generators, T-shirts, and other items.
It is hoping that by December when the
activation finally ends, more people would have had more positive experiences
with the brand, experiences that should not only explain its real deal
positioning but also leave the consumers with sweet, good feelings. This is
how, as it says in its new adverts, it wants to be “Legendary”.
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