Olumide-Awe: How Maltina is Igniting Happiness

In over four decades of its existence as Nigeria’s number one malt brand, Maltina has built a reputation for curating unique experiences and igniting happiness for consumers while impacting millions of Nigerians nationwide. Through a wide range of projects, Nigerians across the nation have felt a huge impact of Maltina especially for fostering happiness across borders and uplifting families. In this interview with the Senior Brand Manager for Maltina, Elohor Olumide-Awe she talks about how Maltina has stayed true to its values of impacting lives and igniting happiness one at a time. Oluchi Chibuzor presents the excerpts

What’s the overarching philosophy behind Maltina’s numerous impactful initiatives?

Our biggest philosophy in Maltina is about igniting happy connections and that sits very well within our brand essence because here we build brands and our brands are built in a way that they are part of people lives – people engage with our brands on a daily basis in one way or form and so we don’t just want to position ourselves as something they only just buy and drink, but see it as something that mean something to them, that connects with them. Therefore, our major brand essence, like I mentioned earlier, is about igniting happy connections with our consumers. And that means that at every point where we see an opportunity for consumers to come together, and connect with families and friends and loved ones and frenemies, Maltina wants to be part of that connection and be the enabler for whatever they are celebrating. So, that’s really what drives what we do as Maltina.

In what significant ways have you seen Maltina affect the Nation’s educational sector positively over the last few years, especially considering programmes like the Teacher of the year and the school game? 

It still comes out of our brand essence. We have two major platforms that are more upscale, where we give back in the educational system. That does not also take away from other engagements that we do. For instance, we sponsor a lot of inter house sports competitions across schools, fun days and other programmes in schools. These are things that we do almost on a monthly basis. But the big platform where we are able to leverage and really bring out what we stand for, as a brand is our Maltina’s Teacher of the year as you rightly mentioned and of course, our Maltina School games. We are participating in these two platforms because it is also a point of connection.

The children come to school, they connect with each other and their teachers. The teachers are the one that connect with them to impart knowledge. And so, we believe that, a lot of times these teachers are overlooked, they are not given the right motivation to continue to give their best to these children and the truth is that our children spend a lot of hours with the teachers in school, and, in fact, sometimes they even rely on what the teachers tell them even more than what the parents tell them at home. And so, for the teachers to be able to influence them positively, they need good motivation and that’s where Maltina comes in to say, we recognise what you do in terms of imparting and building the next generation.

And because of that, we want to give a platform to reward you and to show that we really appreciate what you do and ensure that you keep on doing the good work even better than what you’re doing. And so, this is a national competition amongst teachers, where they get to write essays about what they’re doing in their different schools to impact the life of children, share examples and everything. And we do it in partnership with the ETF, Educational Trust Fund and then there is a panel that actually judges the essays that are sent in by all the teachers and at the end of the day, the top teacher per state is rewarded. There’s always a winner from each of the thirty-six states in the country as well as Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, and then, there is the national winner as well.

The Maltina school game is another massive platform where we directly impact the lives of children. We come in here because we believe that beyond the education that they get, the social interaction through sports is also a very big part of how we mould our children. It also gives them the clarity of mind; they learn skills like team bonding, building relationships, and different things through these competitions. And we’ve run this for three consecutive years now and we’ve impacted over 100,000 children, because we give these children a national platform, where they’re able to showcase their skills. We see that a lot of attention is concentrated on football while not much is done in the area of athletics and this is affecting our performance at major competitions such as the Olympics. 

If you go to the North, East, West, you will find talent that are very good in athletics, and we give them a platform to come, compete, show what they can do, connect, get some training because we bring Olympic athletes to come and mentor them and coach them during the finals. You have sessions with these people throughout that time, and then they are able to go and compete. So, this year was very phenomenal for us, because we were able to hold the national finals again, we couldn’t do that last year because of COVID, we had only state finals. The Minister of Sports actually attended the event, he came with Mary Onyali and Daniel Amokachi, they spoke to the children. Five of our athletes who won went to an international competition in France with the NSSF in May. And then another 12 of them will be going to China in November to represent Nigeria in the World Athletic games. So, it’s a really big platform for us and we see it as something that’s really imparting the life of children. 

Maltina’s tradition of celebrating holidays and religious festivals with consumers is well known across the Nation. How have you been able to identify with the different target groups of consumers  in these celebrations?  

So, we call Maltina the family brand and you know in the family set up, the family is a community of people living together and, in every community, there are different beliefs, different interests, for different members of the community and family. And so, for us, festivals are also important. We have a huge population of Nigerians living in the northern part of the country and in the north, we know they’re always having different types of festivals – Durbar, Argungu and others. Also, in the North, there’s a huge consumption of non-alcoholic beverages. Maltina is also seen as one of their top beverages to consume. They use Maltina for most of their celebrations and we felt that it was important to integrate the brand into some of what these people believe in.

That’s why celebrating things like festivals alongside these consumers is very relevant for the brand. And so, we come in there, support the communities in different ways, either by giving back or even making the product available for them to consume during the ceremonies. We made sure that we play a part and it also shows that we appreciate their loyalty to the brand and signifies that they are relevant to us as consumers. So, for us festivals are very important. It’s also a part of us as Nigerians to celebrate. It is the same in the South as well with festivals such as Ojude Oba, Eyo, New yam. Festivals are part of Nigerian culture and what better way as a brand to show consumers that you appreciate their lifestyle than to acknowledge these things that are important to them.

What have been some common trends in consumer impact across the numerous initiatives spearheaded by Maltina over the past few years?

I think over time, we have been able to build brand love and loyalty from consumers. I mean, consumers even look forward to it; I saw a post recently that said ‘oh, wait for Maltina to do a promo so you can win a trip with your husband to Dubai.’ So, people already know and associate the brand as really giving back and putting the consumers at the forefront of everything that we do. So, we’ve seen a lot of brand love and loyalty. For a while we saw that young people were not really associating with the brand, because they saw it as “Oh, it’s for my parents’ generation”. But now we’re seeing a lot more interest in the brand with even young people talking about it. They go on social media saying things like ‘Oh, I’m having my Maltina vanilla with my meat pie. Thank you, Maltina.’ So, you begin to see a lot of association with young people particularly, and a new set of consumers just trying the brands for the first time. So, I think it’s really built brand love over the years.

What was the impact of COVID-19 on the brand and how were you able to ensure relevance during the period?

COVID impacted a lot of what we would normally do. I think now we’re able to do a lot more. Even though we could not do physical engagement, what we tried to do was to stay top of mind. So, while some brands were pulling out of media support or saying they won’t do this, don’t do that, Maltina kept on engaging with consumers. So, throughout 2020, we did a lot of Virtual Engagements even when we launched our new flavours in 2020, we really went heavy with a digital and influencer led approach to unveil the product and a lot of out of home advertising.

So, one of the things we also did, or were doing, we did a lot of PR, we engaged people during the fasting period, we knew people couldn’t come in larger numbers to the mosque, but they would still be in touch with their Imams. So, what we did was to partner with over 60 imams in different regions, and we sent drinks, our products to the mosques, and we said okay, through the mosque, reach the consumers that would need Maltina to be able to break their fast and things like that. We also did some virtual training programmes,  we partnered with a lady called Northern hibiscus and we were able to give training to over 2000 northern entrepreneurs online through telegram, so they were able to get some training on how to improve their business and things like that. Even here in the West we also partnered with some mosques. We also partnered with Jumia and all these online platforms to be able to even send out products. We didn’t relent in all those efforts.

And immediately we saw opportunities begin to ease up around the Christmas period, we had a massive Christmas engagement with our consumers, with families just to remain relevant and top of mind, in their hearts. Our radio campaign was constantly on just to continue to remind them and we adapted our communication to tell the consumers that even though there is COVID, you can still stay safe and stay refreshed. Lagos State had a lot of community markets, so, we had our sales team set up stores in some of those community markets, and they were able to still sell Maltina and some of our older products as well to the communities around. So, it’s really about remaining relevant and letting consumers know that you are not only there when things are good, that you are also there when things are not so good; that we are that reliable brand that will always be there to support them.

As a marketing expert, how can brands build loyalty? And what is the place of influencers in modern day marketing? 

Building loyalty comes with first of all, having a quality product; a quality product that people can believe in and trust, because if your product is not right in the first place you already have a challenge. Then second is also being clear on the brand role in the consumer’s life. I need to feel that this brand I am using plays a role in my life. If it is nourishment you’re offering, state it clearly and make sure that whatever you’re doing around your brand speaks to that nourishment that you’re offering to the consumer.

Have a clear brand identity, and of course stay relevant to the consumers in life because consumers interact with the product and the experiences it brings to them. So, those are the two major things I will speak about.  In terms of influencer marketing, we’ve seen the rise of influencer marketing over the years and I think particularly during this COVID and post COVID, we have seen it almost triple or quadruple in relevance. It is very key, but you also have to make sure that you are using it tactically, you cannot put all your marketing strategy on influencers because if anything happens to the influencer tomorrow, it has an indirect impact on your brand. Also, when you’re using influencers, you have to pick influencers that fit your brand. In terms of personality, you’d be surprised how far reaching those impacts go on the brand.

The person has to fit your brand in terms of personality, because every brand has an identity.  Maltina is all about being caring, upbeat, fun, it is also a fun brand. So, you need to find people that are able to model some of these attributes so that they also fit very well. And as long as you use influencers, you have to also guide them in how they present your brand and how they infuse your brand in their content. So, it has to be a marriage between authentic content coming from the influencer, but also with the hindsight of what the brand is looking to achieve. So, there has to be a very clear strategy on how you want to engage your influencer, what period do you want to keep them as an influencer and of course, the different engagements you want to use them to achieve for your brand. So, it’s very important, but it also needs to be managed properly, so that you don’t just have a misfit for your brand and then it throws you off course.

How does Maltina plan to sustain its legacy of transformational impact in the coming years and some of the initiatives the brand has been identified with, such as Maltina Dance All?

So, you mentioned Maltina Dance All, that’s a fantastic platform and it’s something that’s a brand own platform because there is one thing to promote your own brand-owned platform. It’s something that as a brand we would definitely possibly love to bring back one day, when and how we’re not yet sure but it is something that hopefully we can explore something around it because it still remains a very strong platform for connection, building that family connection or family bond. Seeing families – father, mother, children and extended family members dance together is always interesting. So, it still remains a very relevant platform and I don’t think there’s anything currently on air like that and it is unique in its own way. So, things like these are what over the years have kept this brand. Even when it’s been off for how many years now, a lot of people still remember it. So, more of such platforms will definitely help to sustain this brand. 

The other thing is also constantly thinking of the next generation, so, whatever we are doing now, as much as we are impacting this generation, in marketing, we call it future proofing the category. So, we want to be able to future proof the category so that the people coming next can also find this brand relevant for them. So, it also means that at every point in time, maybe every two, three years, we look at the strategy, we fine tune, shape, like okay, we have a new set of consumers who have entered the workforce, they can now afford to buy things themselves. So, we need something that can also be able to attract them.

The other thing is because we also engage through family platforms, we’re also already connecting with children from the primary school, secondary school age on different platforms, we are engaging them through the different activities we do, either the Maltina school games, the events that we do during Christmas. So, we are already molding these students who take Maltina as part of their lifestyle. What I noticed growing up was that in my time, Maltina was never presented to you as a child’s drink, it was your mommy’s visitors that took Maltina, not children. But what we’re trying to do is break that barrier and let everyone know it’s a family drink, it’s healthy, it’s nutritious, it’s packed with over six vitamins, including calcium that is very nutritious for children.