Local products need good branding

Published in the Daily Graphic on 25/03/2010, pg 57

Story: Matilda Attram
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Brand Ghana, Mr Mathias Akotia, has expressed the need for Ghana to create a massive growth in inward investment, tourism, and export brands to grow and attain a good middle income status in the marketing world.
This, he said could be done through the effective branding of products and services in the country that could help attract international attention and goodwill.
“To attract international attention and goodwill, the image of Ghana needs to be positively differentiated from the rest of Africa, and also from its past reality of instability and uneasy political experiments”, he stated.
Mr Akotia made this remark at a two-day branding and identity conference organised in Accra by Oxygen Ghana, a brand consulting firm to support the country’s development efforts through branding and identity advocacy.
It was dubbed ‘BRAND 2010’.
The conference which was organised in collaboration with the British Council was expected to create vocal and visual presence for the discipline of branding and design in Ghana.
According Mr Akotia, the absence of power commercial brands of Ghana origin, must provide the country’s brand direction and inspiration, parenting local brands into commercial success.
He stated that Ghana was an ambitious country but lacked the strategies of developing her status in the international marketing environment.
Explaining the benefits of branding, Mr Akotia said strong brands worked at the level of providing identity and values, strong stimulus that created and connected people and cultures together.
He indicated that branding, which was a means of differentiation between chattels provided a source of motivation and interest to many businesses, charities, schools, political parties, places, events and some celebrities in direction and purpose.
He said brands created important social benefits in relation to wealth creation to improvements of quality life as well as provided a reliable and stable indicator of the future health of every business.
Mr Akotia pointed out that brands were the most stable and sustainable asset in businesses and countries that created security and the stability of employment in a country.
“Brands are useful in creating behavioural attraction as well as barriers to exit, thus brands engender more sustainable wealth, meaning more reliable income, leading to a more reliable earnings for organisations and countries”, he said.
He called on marketing professionals to acknowledge their contribution to brand and branding development in the country.
In a presentation, the CEO of Stratcomm Africa, Madam Esther Cobbah, observed that branding attracted much attention from individuals, organisations and countries realising the enormous value it created.
She stated that most identities of social groupings in Ghana and other parts of the world were communicated through branding in order to be recognised.
Madam Cobbah identified effective branding as one which required a systematic and professional approach to achieve its targeted aim adding that “brands are powerful tools of human communication”.
In his welcoming address, the CEO of Oxygen Ghana, Nana Kwadwo Duah, stated that the conference which was organised at the time of Ghana’s planned decisions through its policy measures to undertake country branding was of great benefit to the country.
He commended government for its efforts in promoting branding in the country adding that “Branding and identity either for corporate or national purposes holds the key to propel progress and success”.
The conference hosted other resource persons such as Jeremy Hildreth, a US based Branding and Identity Consultant, Mr Kofi Amoabeng, CEO of UT Financial Services, and , Madam Norkor Duah, the President of the Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG).