This is the most important decision of the course: the brand you pick now is the brand you will market in every lab and project for the next eleven weeks. Choose something you can realistically get information about.
1. Pick your brand (15 min)
Choose ONE:
- A real small business you know personally — a family shop, a friend's brand, your church's bookstore, a business you patronise. You must be able to see (or reasonably infer) their current marketing.
- Your own personal brand or side hustle — if you sell anything or plan to.
- The provided fictional brand: Suya Republic — a Lagos street-food brand (three suya spots in Surulere, Yaba, and Lekki) going online for the first time. They want online pre-orders via WhatsApp, event catering bookings, and eventually a packaged suya-spice product. Budget: ₦150,000/month for marketing. If you pick Suya Republic, YOU define the details the brief leaves open (opening hours, prices, personality) and keep them consistent all course.
Write a 3–5 sentence brand brief: what they sell, to whom, at what price point, and what the business wants more of (orders? bookings? footfall?).
2. Audit the current digital presence (30 min)
For a real brand, find and document everything that exists:
- Website / landing page — screenshot the homepage. Is the offer clear in 5 seconds?
- Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter/X — note follower counts, last post date, posting frequency, what gets engagement.
- Google Business Profile — does it exist? Rating? Recent reviews?
- WhatsApp — business account? Catalog? Broadcast list?
For each asset, write one line: what's working, what's broken or missing.
If you chose Suya Republic (or a brand with zero presence): instead audit ONE real Nigerian brand in the same category (e.g. a popular Lagos food brand) as your reference point, using the same checklist — then list which assets your brand needs to build from zero, in priority order.
3. Score and summarise (15 min)
Rate the presence 1–5 on: findability, clarity of offer, consistency, activity, and ease of buying. Write a 5-line summary: the single biggest strength and the single biggest gap.
Deliverable
Submit a link to a document (Google Docs or Notion) containing: your brand brief, the audit table with screenshots, the 1–5 scores, and the 5-line summary. Add notes on why you chose this brand.
Reviewer checks: a specific, consistent brand brief; evidence of actually looking (screenshots, real numbers); scores justified by observations, not vibes; one clear gap identified.