Orange Moments

It’s day 3 at Orange Academy already.

Before you attempt to call me out for missing out on Day 2, to be very honest, I only just accepted to run with writing about my experiences every day this week.

In this particular piece, I’ll attempt to cramp up Days 2 and 3. On our first day, we got assigned to teams, and we were charged with coming up with an agency name and a logo for presentation the next day.

The energy was high. We met for meetings, we all dropped ideas, and at the end of the day, we picked ‘Peppersoup’ as our agency name.

Before you raise your brows, our story is that we are diverse individuals with diverse backgrounds coming together to make a contextual pot of something sumptuous. And my tagline got picked: “Dare to be different.”

The other team picked KraftKulture as their agency name. We both gave our team presentations, but the judges literally chased us away. They said we needed to think broadly and stay away from anything that had to do with culture. Our agency name could come from anywhere. As such, our presentations had to be rescheduled.

For Day 3, we had an amazing session with Tomi Ogunlesi. It was for a stretch of 7 hours, and we only took a 30-minute break in between.

In this class, we discussed the basics of marketing. We examined the 4 P’s of marketing (a principle now considered to be six) — a concept we had learned earlier from Tope Sule on Day 1.

Day 3 really shaped the fact that dots usually connect. This means that whatever irrelevant experience you may think you have will be useful someday.

It is the same for branding and marketing; it is often a compilation of different activities and efforts. All of these efforts lead to a great goal — building a global brand.

My major high points were that for anything to truly blossom, you need to be intentional and consistent.

What makes Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Apple, or Indomie top-of-mind and household brands is the fact that they show up and preach their gospel to us as consumers. This is also not only through their promotions, but also through collaborations, storytelling, brand activities, placements, and positioning.

And this is one thing that small brands need to adopt; it is not enough to say that this is who I am. It is necessary that you are able to sustain and own this message.

One major thing that stood out for me is that a brand is the result of intentional effort. We are building something, and everything we do, say, or do not do, or say affects what this brand becomes.

And again, like I have always thought, every human has a brand.

What differentiates our personal brands is whether you choose to strategically build or leave the definition of what it is to your audience.

A question that Day 3 left me with is: is branding and marketing a science or an art?

I strongly lean towards the fact that it is an art. Cast your mind to what a day in the life of a Painter will look like. Imagine deciding on the colours that match each piece, the stroke that should be perfect, and even the brush that works best for the project. That is how I love to see brand building. But one thing that we cannot override is the fact that some processes are recurring. They have to happen. Some chemicals have to be mixed. I’d like to think that because of this, we can also say that branding also leans towards science.

What category do you think that Branding falls into?

Don’t ask me, I’m searching for answers as well.

Know something, share with me.