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Product Launch Marketing for AlAhli NCB, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

By Wavelength Marketing6th February 2016November 15th, 2016News

We’re carving out something of a niche as services marketing specialists so it was a real pleasure when AlAhli NCB Bank, one of the Middle East’s leading financial institutions, invited us to work with a select number of their marketing high-fliers on product marketing.

The three-day programme shared product marketing insights, principles and best practice. Content touched on stakeholder profiling, porfolio optimisation, product branding, social media, mobile marketing strategy and product launch performance metrics.

Reflecting on the training, Mr Tarek Khojah, Corporate eChannels Manager at Alahli NCB, notes:

“The three days spent working with Darren proved to be quite a paradigm shift. It offered our team the chance to refocus on critical items which do not receive a fair amount of attention. This is especially true for the Banking sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is still mostly run in a traditional manner. This product-centric training reminded us all that a ‘product’ is more than just a physical entity. Our knowledge of basic terms such as ‘value’, ‘brand’ and ‘market segment’ were challenged in new and interesting ways. This has changed the way our business looks at not only our products, but more importantly our customers and the experiences our products enable us to deliver in the marketplace.

The exercises were engaging and the activities delivered fresh ideas in a rapid fashion. My favourite part would definitely be the case studies and examples. These made the concepts that were introduced more relevant and practical.”

Commenting on the three-day session, Dr. Coleman notes:

“Financial services brands have a tendency to focus on product features such as ATM coverage, interest rates and mobile apps. Competing on features is problematic. It makes product comparisons more straightforward and this exposes brands to price based competition. Products also have a finite number of features. Once these have been used brands tend to get sucked into price-based competition once again. Either way a product driven strategy tends to be bad news. Even if you have a great product that is seldom enough. GoPro’s sliding marketing share is a good example.

During the three days we explored the importance of wrapping engaging experiences around the physical product. In other words, it’s not what you do but also how you do what you do that really drives differentiation. When we started there were a few sceptics in the room but by the final day I was delighted with the group’s response. They really grasped the key concepts and even started to think beyond functional product features by incorporating service design and brand experience principles into their thinking. This was great to see and represented quite a shift in their thinking.”

To learn more about Wavelength’s Marketing Education Programmes, why not send an email to info@wavelengthmarketing.co.uk

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