Hers is a wealthy career that began with marketing for fast-moving client items, veered briefly into broadcast media with a main PayTV supplier, after which into the banking sector.
Chioma Afe is a successful marketing communications skilled with over twenty years expertise spanning FMCG, Consulting (Andersen), direct marketing, telecommunications, broadcast media/content material marketing and monetary providers.
Family and rising up
Afe was born into a household of 5 youngsters in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. “I used to be a little bit of a tomboy rising up, quick hair, no earrings and greatest buddies with my brothers and their buddies, “ she instructed Nairametrics in an interview.
Her father labored in Shell for a number of years (he was a Shell scholar in the 60s’) earlier than beginning his personal enterprise. Her mom mixed being a housewife, elevating 5 children and operating a petrol station dealership. Afe’s mother stays her function mannequin for being a strong-willed, God-fearing girl who took cost of the house when her dad died in 1997.
Educational background
In her 23-year outdated career, Afe has contributed to constructing main Nigerian and African manufacturers, as a marketing skilled, taking merchandise and types, from conception to launch to market dominance. But it began with an unfulfilled dream – a dream to research law.
Though she had utilized to research Law, which was her mom’s dream career for her, Chioma ended up finding out English & Educational Management as a “fallback” course on the University of Port Harcourt. Expressing it in Nigerian slang, she mentioned in an interview, “JAMB jammed me.”
Upon commencement in 1996, she served out the obligatory National Youth Service Corps at The Quadrant Company, the place she first picked curiosity in marketing.
“I caught the ‘marketing bug’ in my youth service 12 months spent at The Quadrant firm PR; my curiosity was sparked to pursue communications & administration of manufacturers. I noticed it as the proper career for me to mix my communication expertise with technique, creativity, a ardour for patrons whereas studying to be extra environment friendly and decisive in a very fast-paced business. I’m extraordinarily enthusiastic about what I do and the merchandise or manufacturers I service, and this has been my guideline and mantra, if you’ll, in each organisation I’ve labored in,” she mentioned in an interview.
After the service 12 months, Afe bought employed on the Pioneer BTL company – Tequila Nigeria, and whereas she was there, she bought a diploma in Direct Marketing with a UK based mostly Institute for Direct Marketing, between 1998 and 2000. She has additionally attended different management and administration programs at Wharton University, Metropolitan Business faculty, Lagos Business School and is rounding off an MBA from the Imperial College Business School, London.
Career as a marketing skilled
Her early career as a marketing skilled went throughout varied sectors—manufacturers like British American Tobacco (BATN), and KPMG. Afe labored as Senior Brand Manager with Cocacola Nigeria Limited from 2006 to 2011, Senior Manager, Brand Assets and Activations with Airtel Nigeria from 2011 to 2012, after which as Marketing Manager, Cadbury Nigeria Plc from 2012 to 2013.
By 2013, Chioma determined it was time to swap sectors. She joined Multichoice as a marketing supervisor, and stayed until 2016 earlier than making one other swap, this time into the banking sector. All of the expertise she had gathered from marketing FMCG and a broadcast media model got here in helpful for her function as a key participant in Nigeria’s banking sector.
She joined Diamond Bank Plc as Divisional Head of Corporate Communications in 2016, and was in this function until the 2019 merger, after which she grew to become Group Head, Retail marketing & Analytics with Access Bank.
Her present function offers her ample room to deliver her ardour for manufacturers, marketing communications, retail merchandise marketing, digital and data-driven marketing, to bear. Afe oversees a staff of assorted artistic skills together with content material managers, model strategists, on-line PR & electronic mail entrepreneurs and information analysts in Nigeria and throughout 12 African nations. The job description is to utilise all of those to ship on product consciousness, buyer acquisition, engagement and retention objectives for Access Bank.
Related
https://nairametrics.com/2022/04/02/how-chioma-afe-moved-from-a-sour-law-dream-to-a-successful-career-in-marketing/
