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Consulting Should Tout Insights for Business Growth- Kalu

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Ikechukwu Kalu is the chief executive officer/lead consultant of Customer Passion Point Limited. He was the Vice President/Group Head of Marketing & Communications of one of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions, First City Monument Bank (FCMB).

He began his career with Guinness Nigeria Plc and worked in different capacities spanning Production, Human Resources, Internal Audit as well as Marketing.

He is a Chartered Marketer and member of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (MNIMN) and Chartered Institute of Marketing (MCIM), London. He is an alumnus of the revered Harvard Business School as well as Lagos Business School‎.

In this interview he spoke to peter ugwu he disclosed why he really wanted to be known for value creation consulting which is mainly about business marketing.

Leaving FCMB for Customer Passion Point Limited
Yes. It’s a great job I enjoyed while it lasted. As you may remember, I was head hunted and recruited all the way from Tanzania where I had just ended an expatriate contract as Marketing Director for Zanzibar Telecoms (Zantel Limited), a part of Etisalat.
I had a two year contract with FCMB which ended in August 2014 but we agreed to extend it to December 2014, a period we thought was adequate to get the team fit into a new structure which was intended to align the activities of marketing and the retail banking group in the bank’s quest to build a viable / profitable retail franchise.

The Concept of CPPL
Customer Passion Point Limited is a value creation firm that is positioned to support p small, growing and medium size organisations to create stakeholder value through consumer insights.
This we do through business marketing consulting and training / development.
We sit with SMEs and Entrepreneurs to understand their issues and develop appropriate solutions to solve the issues. We also serve large organisations that may not have the capacity in house to implement their strategies.

Ever Envisaged Leaving FCMB?
Yes I did know that I was going to leave FCMB at the end of the 2 year contract but I must confess that I expected that the contract would be renewed for another 2 years as I didn’t think the initial 2 years was adequate to midwife the new marketing that I set up.
Looking back now, I see why it was important for the team to work their way around the new structure and evolve organically. I always knew I will go back to working at CPPL because it was borne out of a vision to support small and growing businesses that definitely would not have the capacity for strategy and implementation and would require the services of consultants.
How did it start? It was in 2010 when I was leaving Zain (now Airtel, Nigeria) to travel to Tanzania to take up an expatriate job as Marketing Director when it the idea of setting up Customer Passion Point Limited (CPPL) occurred to my wife and I and we went for it and offered some shares to a friend who was also to run the company while we are away but it didn’t really worked.
The registration was completed but we never did any job until we got back from Tanzania in 2013.
As faith will have it, I had to set up the Tanzania arm in 2011 after my contract with Zantel Limited (a part of Etisalat) ended and I was very comfortable taking up another paid job.
It started with two very influential and successful businessmen (Zadock Kola, the owner of ZK Advertising), a Tanzanian and Tito Alai (a former member of Celtel International Board) from Kenya called me to a meeting on how we could start a truly African brand.
The meeting held at Southern Sun Hotel, Dar es Salam. I still remember the day very vividly. Interestingly, they two big men never got back to me on the subject even as you read this interview, but I walked away from that meeting with a strong passion to set up Customer Passion Point Limited in Tanzania, a brand that would soon become a truly African brand.
Three months after setting up CPPL in Tanzania, we got an opportunity to pitch for a customer engagement campaign job at Ecobank.
We were successful at the pitch and had the responsibility to develop and execute the campaign end to end.
It was about generate quality awareness for the band and growing both customer acquisition and low cost deposit for Ecobank Tanzania. The campaign ran for six (6) and I guess it was very successful as the campaign was later replicated in all Ecobank operations.
It was exactly three (3) into the campaign when FCMB head hunted and hired me for the role of Group Head, Marketing & Communication at a Vice President level.

CPPL’s Service Offerings
We offer two broad services – Business Marketing Consulting and Training / Development. (a.) Business Marketing Consulting. Forward looking businesses know that value creation through efficient and effective marketing is the key to success across times and seasons – during both good and bad economic times.
The challenge for most businesses is that they are not able to quickly and cleverly adapt their marketing strategies to current and foreseeable economic climates. This is not surprising as successful business promotion requires marketing experience and knowledge that many businesses don’t have in-house.
Investing in an experienced business marketing consultant can give an organisation the help that they need to acquire, grow and retain customers while building a solid and sustainable brand. We believe that when you build a solid brand, it will sell itself through advocacy which is the ultimate of good marketing.  (b.) Training / Development.
We are focused on delivering business enhancement training programs. Our flagship program is the CPPL monthly training program for business people where we train business owners and their core staff on strategies for growth and profitability.
We have recently introduced other programs like: (i.)   Effective Business Writing & Communications Skills program to help improve communication within the business environment, appreciating the over whelming positive impact of good business writing and communication to a business.  (ii.) We have also introduced leadership and personal effectiveness training programs. This is because leadership sets the tone for the entire business and people must be thought to appreciate the role of leadership. People should also be thought on how to ensure personal effectiveness at work and manage stress.

The Making of a Good Businessman
A good businessman or woman is someone who is able to convert an idea or value to a profitable business. It’s someone who is able to make a meaning by improving quality of life, righting the wrong and or preventing the end of something good.
He does all these and makes money out of it. If no money is made, then it’s purely social responsibility.
Therefore, I want to emphasis that I really want to be known for value creation consulting which is really about business marketing – marketing of businesses. Secondly, training should be an intervention coming out of a consulting.
Consulting should help tout develop insights which if acted upon should unlock massive opportunities for growth and profitability for the business.

The Toughest Hurdle in Bringing CPPL to This Point
Good question. It’s been getting people to try you out. I thought that it would be a smooth start given that I had worked in great companies and rose quite high there, that they will naturally want to patronize me.
It’s not that easy as they also have to be sure that you can provide value that match the need they have. So, I have had to start small with training and growing gradually.
Our flagship training, the CPPL monthly training program for business people has been on for the past 14 months and we have trained well over 150 participants from more than 50 businesses. We now have to leverage on this to pitch for marketing consulting jobs. Slowly but surely, we shall get there.

The Best Way to Start and Nurture a Business
Start small and grow gradually. This will help you keep cost down and invest wisely. There is nothing wrong in starting from you home and gradually hit the high streets. It’s important to manage cost, be discipline, professional, keep good record, and track your business performance by doing some simple profitability test. It’s really important to start right.

Costliest Mistake Most Business People Make
In my view, it’s about not being disciplined. You don’t borrow money to do business when you are not sure of the returns.
How do you pay back? Some have invested huge funds on aesthetics claiming that ‘image is everything’  You have to start small, understand the terrain and position properly before you start to get into huge investment. There is really no hurry. Get it right the right time and always.

Set Target in Next Five Years as  CEO
I hope to build a thriving business with clients that you can look back and say, yes we did it together. I have been successful with my work carry.
I hope to replicate same in business. I want be known creating value in the market place. I want to redefine the concept of value creation consulting.
The market is there and we are actually few in this sector. My vision is to operate CPPL as a dynamic African brand while focusing on excellent client service in every country (and culture) where we operate in.

Most Difficult Experience Encountered
My case is somehow peculiar. I have been in paid employment for about 32 years and over 10 years of it were on roles that gave me some authority. I had really gotten used to people coming to me as against me going to them.
I was saw surprise now having to wait on the queue to be attended to. It was a rude shock but I learnt humility fast and it’s a long better. My advice is being patient, focus on the value you have and wait for that golden moment to sell.

The making Of A Good Business Consultant
Personal effectiveness is key. You must manage your time well, work well with your clients and continuous self-development. Your client is depending on you for insights and you can’t afford to fail them.You must always to seek first to understand and then to be understood. This way you hear the voice of your client and possibly respond more aptly to their needs. We want our clients to focus on other aspects of their businesses while we help them with the development of insights and the relevant value propositions to drive growth and profitability.


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EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

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The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


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Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

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Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

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Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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