PRESS RELEASE
According to him, public sector organisations in Nigeria need to catch up with the private sector when it comes to establishing a strong brand.
People everywhere are demanding better, more efficient and dynamic services from both the public and the private sectors that are tailored to their specific needs. Poor services can cause great damage to the image of government and create negative perceptions among the public.
"Effective branding, therefore, is crucial to the successful introduction of public services since branding can rouse support for public service and also communicate the goals and aspirations of a new initiative or programme", he stated.
Commenting further on the need for government to embrace branding, he said: "Branding should not be an exclusive preserve of private organisations, federal government agencies need to brand themselves because branding increases public use of services, and the probability that the public will pay attention to the informational messages that the agency is sending.
It also improves the relationship between agencies and their stakeholders and helps government employees to key into their mission thereby, making public organizations function better," Okafor said.
The Platform CEO noted further that branding can help counter public indifference to government's policies and programmes and that in some cases where the government has made some giant strides in trying to improve public services, it has often failed to convey the passion, professionalism and values that exist within such government agencies.
Government can actually learn some useful lessons from commercial branding. In commercial branding a brand is how your audience thinks about your product and connects with it emotionally. It is the combination of how you market your product and how the audience experiences it. While in the case of government branding, the product could be the social behaviour you are promoting or the brand may be an organization, with various service offerings.
He said that the need to assist the government to build a viable brand informed the setting up of an office in Abuja of Platform to assist in the quest to build strong brands in both the public and private sectors of the economy.
"Our base of clients in Abuja has continued to grow and to better respond to the needs of our customers and serve them better we decided to open an office in the capital city. That way, we can provide the government and our clients in Abuja with greater convenience", the marketing communications expert said.
Speaking on the service offerings of the company, the Director of Business Development, Mrs. Uju Obuekwe, said: "We offer a wide array of services, including strategic brand development, identity design and design for print, strategic and research-driven approach to developing branding platforms".
According to her, the company's clientele includes; National Film And Video Censors Board, Abuja Enterprise Agency, Servicom Institute, Society for Family Health, they also work with some leading companies in the private sector such as; Skye Bank, Oak Pensions, Futureview. Platform is the company that is handling the recent re-branding of Reltel Wireless to ZOOM mobile.
President of Platform, Ella Peters said: "We use design to visually express a marketing strategy", adding: "With our creative process and the multidisciplinary experts, we are able to interpret the vision of a brand into concrete actions with direct results." [Ends]
