I will try and keep the introduction short and to the point as it seems a little trite to introduce myself but here goes. My name is Amirah Hachankeng and I work in marketing; I have a BSc in International Trade from INSEEC Business School and an MSc in Marketing and Strategy from Warwick Business School. In my day job I am in charge of “marketing” and Social Media for a parastatal company in Cameroon. If you are reading this blog you are aware that in true Cameroonian fashion I have started my own company, MazdujAA Consulting, which is my much neglected baby. Starting my own company (if one person can be considered a company) was always a given and it made sense to do it now as it facilitates a lot of the projects I have in the pipeline. So that’s me in a nutshell, I am sure as I continue to post you will discover more about me.

I have a light idea of what I would like this Blog to be about: mainly my insights and experiences in marketing as I “start” my career (I am 3 years in). I will generally try to refer to current articles or specific marketing methods to support my opinions, however this post will not be like that. My first post, in keeping with the introductory theme, is going to focus on my first foray into the business world as a WBS graduate (concentrating on the marketing aspect) and hopefully give you an insight into my thought process.

One of my first attempts at business after I moved back to Yaoundé, Cameroon was a games night/ “chill”. This was a clear case of over extending myself and under estimating the importance of market research. It was a fairly simple idea, find a venue and organise interesting drinking games and charge a door fee. My vision for these nights was to create a lifestyle brand, I at one point contemplated changing the name to Chilling Life which I felt better suited the brand. There was a Chilling Live website which covered, recipes, fashion, memes, sports, events, and was supposed to create a sense of community. The site was supposed to be a space for people to choose the theme for the next event and enjoy pics and videos from the last one. In hindsight the website was trying to do too much and more than likely confused most visitors. While my attempts at designing flyers and images for social media could have been better, it was not the reason for Chilling Live’s failure. There were two main problems with Chilling Live: not enough market research and I chose the wrong platform to spread my message.

I did no market research, and if I had done so I probably would have seen that my approach needed to be readjusted. Working off the flawed belief that my friends enjoy my chills and therefore that format can translate to a paid event, is one of the biggest reasons that chilling live made little to no money. The second reason is that I had to use an external venue (my mum was not about to have strangers in her house) and would have to rent a space or come to an agreement with the owner of the venue. The biggest issue here was my price point, in order for me to make a profit I couldn’t charge too low, but the venues still needed customers to buy food and drink from them otherwise they would lose out. This was one of the main reasons I abandoned this project as I could not find a solution I was happy with. The first chilling live I made a small profit (mainly because all my friends came to support me) but the venue itself was unhappy with how much they sold in concessions. For the second event I chose a less popular venue with the belief that they would be happy for any business I brought them. I made no money on this event, mainly because my friends were busy that night but also because my marketing campaign did not appeal to or reach my target audience.

The main mistake I made when promoting Chilling Live was too many platforms. While I know that I is important to be accessible to you consumer having a website, a Twitter account, a Snapchat and an Instagram page was excessive. One of the biggest lessons I learnt during my masters, which I should have applied here, was about tailoring your branding to suite your target market. All of the information I was trying to give my audience could have very easily been done on Instagram. Most Snapchat users had already begun migrating to “Insta stories” and much of the content on my website was better suited to Instagram anyway. Cameroonian Twitter is something I do not understand (a future post will be done on this topic) and I should have avoided it. Hindsight is 20:20 and it became clear that instead of having around 50 followers on each platform I could have had 150 on one which would have grown my page a lot faster. One platform would have also improved my content which was another problem I faced.

Because each platform is used for different things I was trying to cater to each platforms specific strength and therefore posting mediocre content (when I remembered) on all of them instead of astounding content on one. Chilling Live only had 2 events and I used a different marketing approach with both of them. With the first event I posted various teaser images and slide shows to hint at drinking games and other activities associated with nightlife. I also posted a video of myself with a Snapchat filter (this was extremely cringe worthy) explain what Chilling Live was and what the first event would be. While it was important to explain the event I used the wrong method. Nobody cares about a girl they don’t know explaining a concept their not that interested in. A better approach would have been to have some “chills” at my house and film my friends and I doing what we do best. Posting multiple clips of people enjoying themselves and showing the different aspects of what a Chilling Live night could be would have attracted more interest and would have gained me more user interactions and therefore more followers. The second approach I used was slightly better, I had my friends post clips of themselves inviting people to the event. I then made a compilation video of all their videos and posted them to my pages. Contrary to my friends posts, posting to my page accomplished very little, as I did not have enough followers.  The success of my friends post is most like because I used a tried and tested method, even though this did not translate to attendees.

This leads to my final issue which is Return on Investment. The importance of ROI is something I learnt the hard way during my second event. Because my first event was mainly comprised of my friends ROI was not an issue. While many people expressed interest in my second/last event only 10% showed up on the night. This might have been avoided if once people expressed interest I provided my friends with interesting content (mentioned above) to post or send directly to the person. In true lazy form I had also teamed up with a local promoter and offered them commission for every person they brought to the event.  This made me relax and not push as hard in terms of promotion which turned out to be a mistake since they brought no one (Alexa play cricket sounds).

I will always wonder if I should have kept Chilling Live going for a little longer, and if a change to my marketing methods would have gathered enough interest to make it a success. Reducing my social media presence to one Instagram account instead of a mixture of social media platforms would have allowed me to create better content to gain followers. Overall it is clear that there were many changes to be made but despite all of this I am not sure if it would have made a difference because Yaoundé is not the right market.