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Phillipa Mukome Chinhoi Youth Interactive Correspondent
YOUNG people should be given space to come up with new and innovative ways to empower them, they should gain the ability, authority and possibility to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and lives of other people.
Anesu Chikumba (25) a young brand strategist, is doing wonders by working with big organisations and cooperates in formulating their strategies and image building.
Anesu loves helping African individuals and organisations build a reputation aligned with their vision using digital marketing tools. Her dream is to see African entrepreneurial ecosystem grow, she is passionate about solving African challenges, empowering young people and contributing to the growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The soft spoken beauty said she wants to see the African entrepreneurial ecosystem grow and has over the years developed resources that can help the entrepreneur in getting started with building their brand foundations and social media presence.
This has led Anesu to co-found ‘Hive FreelanceNetwork’, a community for freelancers to journey together; and Unpublished, a social impact organisation creating opportunities for emerging African photographers and creatives.
She does this through ‘The Created Creative’ a brand and digital marketing service, and educational podcast; Building African Brands.
As a Brand strategist and trained Digital Marketer she has helped professionals, founders and organisations in bridging the gap between what they want to be known for and what they are currently known for.
Chikumba studied Business at the University of Cape Town and after taking a social media course she went on to pursue an Advanced Diploma in Digital Marketing with another college also in Cape Town called Red &Yellow Creative School of Business.
She started freelancing and offering social media management services while studying and that’s when she realised that a lot of the people wanted the services but didn’t have anything that would help them stand out, so she then started helping with this process, learned more about Brand strategy, positioning and how to create messaging that would help the organisations both online and offline.
“Clearly defining what you want to be known for is a good starting point as it helps me create my brand foundations and something that other people can eventually buy into, this includes how l work, or how l make people feel and the lasting impression they have,.
“My strengths lean more on creating strategies that have a holistic approach to the online space. A lot of people tend to only think about social media, but it is only one piece of the puzzle and should be guided by your overall goals,”.
“I have a brand first approach as it is important to first understand what the organisation wants tobe known for, who they want to serve, its short and long term goals, as well as its resources (time, skill sets available and money),”.
She said the people youwant to serve should guide your brand. She had a client who wanted to help men abovethe age of 40 in executive roles for their consultancy service.
Their logo, fonts and colours were too feminine for their target market and the words and phrases used in their captions and blogs would have typically appealed to this kind of person. This was in addition to the social media platforms they had chosen. She had to rebrand and it came out perfect!
Anesu pointed out that having a good understanding of the target audience is important as it should guide almost all branding and digital marketing efforts.
“It isn’t just about selling my products and services but l go more into understanding my target audience in my free podcast which is available on all podcast streaming platforms,”.
“l create an emotional connection with my customers through story telling. l use storytelling in brand strategy as this is a way to humanize the brand, and creates relatability.
Also, stories are scientifically proven to get a person’s attention,”.
“As we have a lot of gaps in the market, l see a lot of businesses that implement what they have seen in other markets without considering the needs or challenges of the people they want to serve.
For example, introducing a service that can’t easily be accessed by the market affects your brand experience. Episode 29 of the Building African Brands (TheCreated Creative Podcast) goes into this.
Online Reporter