I started working on this brief with the mindset that I was going to be the best at it. It was my first brief into my journey as a Brand Strategist, even though it was for an abstract Aphrodisiac biscuit brand, I was determined to make it as real as possible and push myself hard beyond seeming limits. It was fun and challenging. I almost gave up at a point because it looked like I wasn’t getting it right but so much was at stake for me. I had given up so much to make sure this project was a success. I hope you enjoy reading this. I will be sharing my score at the end of this write-up
The Brief
Above is the brief I worked and made a presentation at Orange Academy last week Saturday. As Integrated Brand Experience (IBX) students, we were tasked with branding an APHRODISIAC BISCUIT targeted at adults. It was challenging at first but I made up my mind to ‘kill’ the project and guess what? I did!
My Research Journey
Working on this brief was really awkward for me at first. Never heard of the word ‘Aphrodisiac’ until we got this Brief last year. I started by reaching out to friends who worked in the health sector to find out about the health implications and benefits of Aphrodisiacs and why and how they are different from sex enhancements products, I also wanted to know the categories of people who used them. I got 3 different insights talking to two doctors and a pharmacist and conclusion was that there was a huge market for Aphrodisiac products in Nigeria and demand is also pretty high
I still wanted to dig deeper, I wanted to understand how Aphrodisiacs are being used and the categories of people who used them, I visited 3 different pharmaceutical stores at different locations in Lagos. One of the stores was located around one of the top universities in Lagos, while the other 2 were located at one of Lagos’ commercial centres. I remember one of the pharmacists I spoke to was reluctant to talk to me about sex stimulants until I showed him proof that I was working on a project(Just another way culture affects issues in our society).
My Target Audience
While my research process was going on, I knew I wanted to target women but was undecided about the psychographics and demography of the women I wanted to target. I thought to myself if women are going to demand sexual freedom, it had to start early, so I decided to target women between the ages to 25 -40 who are either single or married, who are social and upwardly mobile. I looked up at the statistics of Nigerians within this age range and there are actually over 27 million of them according to CIA World Factbook.
Although women were profiled to be the primary consumers of this biscuit, I realised I needed to also reach the men who could also be customers. There are men who wouldn’t mind stocking up Aphrodisiac biscuits for their spouses while they stock up for themselves too.
My Findings
Since we were tasked with creating an edible Aphrodisiac brand for adults, I decided to check products I could compete with. There are a few edible ones but the market is dominated with pills and lubricants but I chose to compete with sex stimulant drops and sex chewing gums. Below are some of my findings (won’t be mentioning the brands):
1. Most Aphrodisiac products are targeted at men, very few products are available for women
2. There are no known quality edible aphrodisiacs in the market
3. The demand for edible aphrodisiac products are very high but very low in supply
4. There have been reports of date rapes activities using one of the products
My Insights
After speaking to medical experts on the various products in the market, I decided it was time to know who my target audience would be so I set up an online survey and asked my social media connects to fill, didn’t get quite much data as I thought I would so I started initiating conversations with friends and starting telling one I met about the exciting project I was working on and trusting them to help provide insight to take it further. I spoke with young and old men and women, I wanted to know their opinions about sex stimulants and find out if they used them too. Trust me, these conversations were awkward to have because women don’t usually talk about things like this publicly in this part of the world. Talked to about 20 people at different times, I streamlined the insights I got from the 4 following points below:
1. Most men don’t ask their partners how great the sex was after every experience
2. Most women don’t enjoy sex, they just endure through it
3. Women don’t want to be seen as sex machines, they want to be part of the experience
4. Women want to be able to express themselves sexually.
Consumer Insight and proposition
I decided to focus on the 4th insight which “Women want to be able to express themselves sexually”. I dug more and found out that women want to be free to initiate sex, have foreplay and be all mushy with their partners they want sexual emancipation. So I decided to brand an aphrodisiac biscuit “to enhance women’s desire to enjoy sex”.
BIG Idea
Trust me, it took a long while to come up with this BIG Idea, I was stuck on it for about 2 weeks, all the ideas I had were off point, shared the progress I had made with a few friends and while we were making banters and laughing at how stuck I was, I thought of FREEDOM and then EMANCIPATION and then boom! I decided on Sexual Emancipation.
Introducing Spice
I had so many ideas on what I wanted the biscuit to be called; Play, Pump, Slay etc but I thought Spice sounded cool and resonated more with the audience I wanted to target so I went with it. One of the definitions of Spice according to the WordWeb dictionary means to “Make more interesting or flavourful”. Note that that the main aim of the biscuit I wanted to brand was to enhance women’s desire to enjoy sex. So to enjoy sex, women need to spice things up.
The Communication and Marketing Strategy
I was clueless as to what the communication strategy should be at first, I didn’t want the communication to sound and appear too ‘raunchy’ I wanted every of my target audience to feel like I was talking to them personally but didn’t know how to go about it. Thanks to my dear friend Omotayo (Former IBX student as well) working with me to get this right. We decided to go with recent happenings in the country (Nigeria) and we settled for ‘THE OTHER ROOM’. In Nigeria, the other room became synonymous to the bedroom in October 2016 when the Nigerian President claimed his wife belonged to the kitchen and the other room at an international conference ( please Google The Other Room + President Buhari to find out more).
The Other Room (Teasers + Reveal)
Recall from the big idea above that Spice is all about sexual emancipation for women, and from the research and insights I gathered, women wanted to be free to express themselves in ‘the other room’ so we had the following as teasers and eventually revealed the product
Advertisement and Promotional Materials
Go To Market
I decided on the following route to market based on the insights I gathered during my research stage. Sex stimulants are not always publicly displayed at stores and most women don’t still feel comfortable buying them publicly. I also got to know that demand for edible sex stimulant products is high at 3–5 star hotels in Nigeria, so I chose as follows . . .
1. Pharmaceutical stores
2. Hotels
3. Lingerie shops
4. Online stores
I look forward to your comments and suggestions on what I would have done better
Oh, by the way, I had a total score of 82.37 over 100.
Here is a 40-second video from my presentation.
I absolutely enjoyed working on this project and would like to thank everyone who helped at one stage or the other. Special shout out to Omotayo(Brand Strategist), Eyitayo(Insight Imagination Officer) and Joseph (the creative designer) for the awesome and consistent feedback.
I look forward to your comments and suggestions on what I could have done better
Oh, by the way, I had a total score of 82.37 over 100.
This article first appeared here
Thanks for reading