Solomon Sanusi: Every Brand Needs to Understand Its Bottlenecks

Solomon Sanusi is a seasoned media strategist and the Director of Social Media Centre Marketing, a marketing firm with operations in Shenzhen, China, and headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. He tells Tosin Clegg how he amplifies brands, talents, and enterprises, ensuring they are seen, heard, and made relevant through strategic media planning, innovative digital campaigns, and effective public relations.

How has your experience shaped your approach to making brands and talents visible?

I would specifically say I explore; I love to travel the world. I travel to get fresh ideas, even though there’s nothing new under the sun. You might need to tick it here and there to get another approach to suit what concept or idea that is in your mind or your client’s. That idea of exploration has worked for me. I keep myself up to date by exploring, by going places, by learning new things, and by being teachable. All these have made me innovative. And most importantly, just trying things out, because a lot of the time, you can plan all you know, but if you do nothing, nothing is going to be executed, so I take solace in trying things out. Sometimes you win, a lot of the time you fail, but the reality is, the more you try, the better you become.

With over a decade of experience, what specific strategy have you found most effective in achieving your goals for clients?

The most specific strategy I found is that, people want to achieve a certain goal within a certain time. They say delay is not denial, but once it becomes too long to a certain point, then people start to feel like, our rights or goals are defeated. So, one of the strategies that we offer at Social Media Centre is timeliness, and timeliness is very key to life at every point. If a player on the pitch does not know how to quickly head up to where the ball is going while he is in the mind of his fellow player, then he is going to miss out on the opportunity of scoring the goal. Hence, timeliness is a major approach to how we deal with clients and how we resolve their marketing needs.

How do you stay updated with the latest trends and developments to ensure that your strategies remain innovative and effective?

When people come to us, it’s because they have a goal, and that goal is to be relevant, to be out there, also, they want to be seen and heard. Knowing that has made me know that people are not just trying to put out services, products, songs, or projects, what they ultimately want to put out is the totality of their value and what that value can do to people or can resolve in people’s lives. That approach is why I don’t see marketing or selling as just a means for my company to make money, but as a means to give value that the customer or the client is looking for.

Can you share a successful campaign or project that you spearheaded where you achieved significant results for a client?

 One of the clients I want to throw forward is Tade Cash as an idea that needs to reach the world and that idea is an idea of cash flow and for him, he says “cash flow is like your blood and you can’t live without your blood; it has to be constant”. When the blood is taken out of a being, life stops to exist in that being. In less than 30 days, we spearheaded the campaign for his sold-out show, but we blew it larger than the room. It was held at Marriot Hotel and we used public relations, digital marketing, and advertising bill-boards to achieve the summit hosted for 200 candidates. The world knew that it was an idea that needs to be shared around and listened to by millions of people in the world. We love to work with clients that are passionate, it motivates us. We love to work for clients who don’t just work for enterprises. We don’t just work for talents. We work with people who are passionate, we love to put our name behind such brands, talents or services.

In your opinion, what are the key elements necessary to be seen, be heard or be relevant in today’s fast-paced digital landscape?

Balancing creativity comes with this aspect of business. Let’s take for instance, music. The way we are going to manage music, promote or advertise music is quite different from the way we advertise travel. It’s also going to be different from the way we advertise a product. Although, they may have similar element of things to do or how to do it, but the approach is totally different. So, depending on the field of interest, every field industry has got their own approach and how they are done. In some industries, what is done last is done first in other industries. Knowing the sequence in which your marketing or campaign goes for each industry helps to keep your creativity at the most possible advantageous point for the client.

How do you approach balancing creativity and strategy in your work, especially when managing multiple touch points?

What I consider to be the biggest challenge for every brand is when they don’t know what is their bottleneck. No matter the solution you bring to the table, if they don’t know what the original problem that is responsible for making a business not to scale through, an artiste not to be known, or even for a brand not to be as relevant as they want to be, then the main problem has not been discovered.  Once you know your bottleneck, then you’re on a 50 percent chance of resolving it faster than trying so many other things that would not help the situation at hand. The approach to business or enterprise and talent is that, there is usually a singular thing that you need to do first before every other thing lines up. So, when a business does not know their major problem; which is their bottleneck, then it becomes very difficult for them to scale. And that’s where we come in as a firm. We can help you spot where your bottleneck is and how to take the major problem that is causing the bottleneck. Once that is taken out, then we can hit our goal(s) faster.