For Chioma Yvonne Afe, as Head, Marketing and Communications, Access Bank Group, her passion for consumer brands, people, and communication is unflinching. As a dynamic senior business executive, she has worked for global businesses like British American Tobacco, Coca-Cola, Airtel and Cadbury Mondeleez as well as African ones like Multi-Choice in her 24-year work experience, which spans FMCG, Consulting-Andersen, Direct Marketing, Telecommunications, broadcast media/content marketing and financial services. At Access Bank however, she is focused on driving business growth through implementing innovative and creative enterprise-wide marketing and brand building campaigns. With a marketing degree and graduate diploma in Direct Marketing from the renowned DM Institute in the UK and an MBA from the prestigious Imperial College Business School, London, as well as certifications from several leadership courses at Lagos Business school and Wharton Business school, amongst other things, she tells Chiemelie Ezeobi in this interview how she set up and led the Retail marketing and analytics group with a focus on supporting the bank’s ambition to be the number one retail bank in Nigeria after its merger with Diamond Bank in 2019. Essentially, at Access, she oversees a diverse team of marketing specialists in Nigeria and 12 other African subsidiary markets with primary focus on achieving the bank’s ambition of being a top 10 bank on the continent in the next five years. A member of the Executive Council Leadership of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria, ADVAN and
WIMBIZ associate, she is also passionate in mentoring and impacting young female corporate executives while actively advocating for female participation at senior levels in the corporate world
As Head, Marketing and Communications, Access Bank Group, Chioma Yvonne Afe’s job is dynamic and multi-faceted, a fact she will be first to admit. Primarily, her role involves retail marketing and communication.
Although her sojourn into the financial sector began in 2016 at Diamond Bank before its merger with Access Bank in 2019, she saw the importance of retail marketing when the merger took place, thus the need to engage their retail customers was borne.
According to her, once the merger took place, the banks combined 29 million retail customers and they discovered that the one-size-fits-all marketing approach and communication no longer suited their customers’ needs, so they created another one.
Journey to the Top
If there is one thing Afe has been able to do, it is proving that a woman can still climb the executive ladder while taking care of the home front. Like she tells those she mentors, including a single mother, excellence always sticks regardless of gender.
“So I learned a long time ago that excellence always sticks if you know your job. I insist on being judged by the output of my work, not by how I look or the fact that I’m female, not that I have four children.
“The questions should be ‘do I come to work on time? Yes. Do you give me a task on any device? Yes. If I come into a snag, do I raise my hand and say I need some support? Yes. But do I also not make excuses? Yes. That is why I said you must build the credit so that tomorrow when I say I can’t come in at seven o’clock because I have to take my child to school or meet the teacher at nine, you will understand because I have done everything I need to do.
“So as a woman, it’s about being treated equally and understanding that I’m capable, and I’m able to do this. So judge me first that I’m an excellent person and I do my job.
“As a woman it’s not been easy, but I’ve worked with all sorts of people-male and female, my best boss ever is a male. He was always pushing me and then at the same time, encourage you. So being a guy, he also helped me build my confidence to deal with men in the workplace at senior levels. They are looking for competence, give them competence first, and everything will follow.”
Why Banking
For one who had worked with multi- nationals, the move to the financial sector was a leap from Multi-choice. But she felt that for communication to be truly rounded, one needs to understand the other parts of the brand that are not driven by product and sales and “all that, that speaks to the corporate image as opposed to corporate brand perception”.
On the journey so far she said: “The journey been very hectic, tough and very different. The way Diamond Bank and Access Bank were, were very different organisations but excellent. We had strong retail franchise in Diamond and Access Bank had big bank mentality, they brought a more aggressive sort of approach to pushing the people to get the work done. But even in that sort of aggression, I think there’s a pride in winning that I have never seen anywhere else.
“And of course, given the Access culture, there’s so much pride in being the first and the best. What have I gotten from all these? Don’t just get into the game because you want to be that number, get into the game because you want to be number one, and you can’t just be number one, you need to excel too. So that is what I have learned in the last three years with Access.”
Role in Retail Marketing, Internal Communications
What does the retail marketing involve one might ask. According to Afe, they look at campaigns while working with product managers on the best way to engage customers. They also look at direct marketing through the digital (email and SMS) and help them to plan their marketing activations. But beyond this, they provide events support for regional activations as well as branches, because the bank operates a branch banking system.
So part of what she does is look at stability in the branches and revamp where necessary to ensure that from a marketing standpoint, their communication around their products, services, working with customer experience and how best to serve, are in tandem.
In gauging this, a team of analytics, who are focused on performance management look at customer behaviour or transactions and ascertain where the problem is with the inflow and outflow.
Also, she said they look at campaigns on how it is affecting the target audience at all and whether they are positively attuned to those campaigns?
Basically, she noted that they look out for performance and with her team. ” This is an extension of what I am doing in managing the subsidiary markets. So we currently have about 11 countries outside of Nigeria that we are present in and I’m responsible for supervising the markets and outcomes for people in those markets.
“So my role is what they call a quid pro. So I would focus on retail products, move into those markets and similarly communicate from the central perspective. But I also work with them on their strategy, I help them out with PR insights and stuff like that. So we’re hand in hand.”
Beyond that, she deals with the corporate brand, its sustainability, and the corporate media. Then for the bank, she also deals with its internal communications, as well for the bank’s events or sponsorships. Also, speaking to their corporate and commercial clients sits within her portfolio.
Need for Inclusion
On the quest for Inclusion that the bank is championing at the moment she said:
“We are an African brand with a global outlook. So that is the vision for the ban and what we’re focused on. He speaks about excellence a lot, professionalism and inclusion.
“The reason for that is that with our merger, we’ve gone into southern Africa, a market that has no other African banks like Botswana, as well. We just opened Kenya and Cameroon as well. So when you’re saying the inclusion and you create a new market, you have to make the people who are there doing the work- the locals, the indigenous of those countries also feel they’re part of this bigger thing.”
Putting the Customer First
In creating their messaging strategies, Chioma believes it’s pertinent to put the customer first.
“The business side makes me want to put the customer first. So you understand this importance in customer insights by putting yourself in the customers’ shoes, because if you have not walked the path of the customer in the marketplace, you can’t sell it to the customer. Simple!”
To do this, she said they look at Search Engine Optimisation and all the buzzwords around digital marketing that typically banks would not have done, which is what is done in email marketing. With this, they guage what needs of the customer has been met or unmet and then fashion out solutions to meet them.
Also, they sample first hand opinion from customers from inside the bank, their SMEs and even exclusive plus customers. This is in addition to surveys they do, all geared to understand their customers. The responses gotten has always helped them sort of design how best to communicate with that particular audience.
Need for Mentors
As a woman in a demanding profession, she believes women should find role models in their businesses and have them speak to you about how to map it out because you can’t do it by yourself.
“So have that agreement, have some kind of plan as to where you want to go and have that conversation with somebody who even in the organisation can say, ‘wait a minute, I see you doing this, you know, why aren’t you in this project, come on to this thing, either let people see that you can do it” And then and then take it from there. And then always be conscious of it.
“Always be deliberate about your actions even as a female. You have to be courageous. You have to be ambitious, slightly greedy, and not look at anybody’s face. That’s true. And then also be very open to the experiences. Very open to the challenges, do not shy away from them. I have ladies who are secretive about finding a bit of balance.”
Juggling Multiple Responsibilities
With the multi-faceted role she plays, she has been able to juggle all effectively by being a team player at work. With her open door policy and communication strategy with her team, the work gets done effectively.
She also believes that building trust and having a regular conversation helps, so every month she holds meeting with all the heads of marketing. But beyond this, she gives them a certain level of freedom to do what they need to because they understand their market.
“In terms of the number of customers we have across the whole of Africa at the least, we have about 60 million. We have grown rapidly and I think in the next five years our goal is to double our pace and we look at 100million. So this period, we are taking the time to balance that sheet and take the company one step closer to number five and we get there.”
Future Goals
On her personal goal in the next five years, she aspires to be on an executive board. However, even though she recently did her Master’s Degree, she still wants to return to school and do more on programming because she believes that “the way things are moving right now, it is not all about facts, but about payment system and services and that’s all about Fintech. So I want to play a role in that ecosystem”.
Support System
But given all she has achieved so far, Afe believes the solid support system she has played a huge role in her success story. From her team and supervisors at work to her husband, who has held and kept her solid.
“I have an excellent support system at home too. My husband is probably the best and I say this because when we first merged, it was as hectic as we were up to sometimes 11 o’clock midnight, but he understood that it was for a time and that I was just driven to be the exact support system in the office,” she said.
On the work front she posited, “I have an excellent team. Some of them came with me from the former bank, some of them new but they have implemented a very supportive system that could take up tasks. I’ve got an excellent set of managers.
“Also my supervisors are Victor Etuokwu (ED) and Roosevelt Ogbonna (CEO). They allow you do the work and get the job done.
“We celebrated 20 years of Access back in March and Roosevelt has been part of that journey for 20 years, so he understands the vision, quest for excellence, need to be professional and understand the culture of access, and what we’re trying to achieve. Not just in Nigeria, but across the African continent he still carried on that same vision.”
Creating Balance
To those who know her, Chioma is not just about work. In between her duties to her home and work, she has found a perfect way to create balance and a ‘me time’ for herself- Yoga.
But it all started during the lockdown when she was advised by her doctor to focus more on meditation. She signed up since then and goes for yoga classes at least once a week.
Interestingly, she is also an avid lover of fun games on her phone and Korean Soaps, as well as an absolutely huge fan of Marvel and DC movies. She also loves to read comics in her spare time.
