The year was 2015. Maybe 2016. I wrote in a sheet of paper at my then advertising agency that I was going to be the chief marketing officer, EMEA for a multinational. Sometime in October 2021, I started a new role as a brand, marketing and communications lead for a UK food brand launching soon in Nigeria. Well, in a sense, expanding into Nigeria = multinational, right? And in the first few weeks, my statement to a friend was “Now I know why my former clients respond or send emails at odd hours”.

While it’s been an exciting experience so far, it’s also been a lot of new learnings. It’s a lot of moving parts. A lot of seemingly small but critical decisions and a lot of big decisions. Decisions that are impacting total product and brand development. Or will impact the brand life longer term. The past months have been about pack and taste and product credentials. It’s been about designing the brand especially as a new one coming home in a new market – all things expected in new product development (NPD), market expansions and new market entry. Some consumer good companies have separate innovation teams for these activities but that’s the best thing about starting/working with a start up. It’s deep dive into the big waves – swim or sink.

These past months, I’ve been in conversations, debates around product names, channels, product USP and differentiating that from the corporate itself. We’ve named flavours, changed names, replaced names, circled back, to include an exclamation mark or not. We have discussed colour and needspaces, market, strategy, channels, what to trademark, what can be trademarked and putting all of that into a product pack design. Should I even get started on nutritional information? And then, back of pack design. What should be in bold? What shouldn’t? Allergens? Shelf life? Bar codes? QR codes? Regulatory? Creating corporate / digital assets – website, email banners, social media pages, gift items; brand experiences, what should consumers take away when they experience the brand?, Pack sizes, etc.

I have read through research reports, had conversations on competitor activities, activations, events, designed our csr plan side by side HR, budgets and budgeting, digital strategy, product, brand and corporate considerations, promotions and a whole other long list.

I heard ‘somatic markers’ as a term for the first time, have been speaking with the sales team and the operations lead, learnt HORECA – acronym for Hotels, Restaurant & Cafes. And then the most profound thing I learnt when you’re confused and lost, just go back to the marketing basics.

There are moments when they have been overwhelming, especially in these early days. What I’ve also learnt to do is to separate one from the other i.e. trade support activities from marketing activities and then those from the communications activities. And yes, the lines do get blurry.

I may have been dreaming small when I wrote in that sheet of paper that my big dream is to become chief marketing officer, EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa). So I erased that and wrote a new one. Maybe one day I’ll tell you.