Chinenye Ikwuemesi is a black female founder of the first hybrid consulting-agency Iconify, a distinctive brand agency with a highly unique approach.
As an entrepreneur and the architect of a transformation process that builds resonant brands through compelling stories and strategies, Chinenye’s agency also creates capability, connections, and operational readiness to match brand ideals and goals.
“Your brand is the sum of everything your brand does, how you operate and how your people and processes function. Therefore, the power of your brand is directly related to how well all parts of your business interconnect to deliver the solutions promised, dispensing with solving in silos. This is our USP.”, she says.
Chinenye realised that while many digital agencies focus on branding, they do not provide change management and digital capability implementation in parallel to improve clients’ positioning and value proposition. Often a separate consultancy does this, entirely divorced from the front end work.
“The potential of the brand is wholly dependent on the business’s ability to operationalise ideas and ideals that inform functions meeting customer expectations and delivering reliable and consistent customer experiences. This makes it critical for your digital capability and operational prowess to align with your brand ambitions and strategy.” she says.
Iconify was born to fill the creative consulting gap in integrated marketing and change management to develop holistic business solutions and also to create opportunities for greater diversity in the agency and consulting space.
The agency assists with internal, operational and people changes that underpin and facilitate the delivery of the brand’s promise. “We help businesses grow or solve problems in a connected and holistic way that bolsters the business operations and reinforces the brand.” They do this by identifying brand purpose, defining brand strategy, then making sure the business is ready through process optimisation, target operating model change and training people.
Chinenye says, “One hundred years ago, with less competition for resources and attention, perhaps purpose and strategy were not critical. Post-pandemic, it will be indispensable to an enduring position or sustainable proposition. As long as the biggest brands continue to spend billions in ad revenue without purpose and a brand strategy, a business cannot be a brand of the future.’’
Observing the huge shift in digital trends that facilitate how we store, codify and transform data, with the vista of confusion in the transformation landscape, and seeing established brands fall on their faces trying to go through business transition, Chinenye instinctively understood that these disconnects had to be linked.
Transformation tends to be handled by an arm of business different and removed from those focused on brand engagement and management, with minimal or nil communication between them. Business objectives tend to split out by function, leading to a massive loss of opportunity to work in concert, communicate and integrate solutions that add value end-to-end.
This led to Chinenye creating an agency with cross-functional capabilities to build stronger solutions and dispense with ‘solving problems in silos’.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chinenye-ikwuemesi-brand-strategist-and-transformation-specialist/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/iconifycandc/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iconify7/
Instagram: https://Instagram.com/Iconifycc/
More about Iconify
Iconify provides the opportunity for small and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to build a framework, story and capacity to match customer experiences and value to customer expectations and brand promise.
Using a holistic approach to identify challenges, find solutions, and deliver value and a unified message across all channels, operations are optimised for aspirational and designed customer experience, thereby building standout brands.
Many businesses regard branding as purely a marketing exercise, but the value can be limited. Iconify not only help businesses identify their purpose, define position and proposition, but also implement and optimise the modes and methods of creating that value, ensuring SMEs avoid and bridge the divide between customer expectations and customer experiences that companies suffer from by having several different suppliers, managing different parts of their business challenges with no shared objectives or communications, fragmented strategies and decentralised directives.
More about Chinenye
Chinenye was inspired to found Iconify, the first consulting agency of its kind to meet the creative consulting gap in the business landscape for an integrated marketing and transformation capability. Frustrated by the lack of black female leaders in the agency and consulting spaces, she also creates opportunities for greater diversity in the consulting and marketing industries.
Part of Chinenye’s uniqueness lies in being highly creative, yet having a strong technical literacy and in understanding and respecting processes yet putting the customer and employee experience first, through all transitions.
She is passionate about small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how to give them a chance to be the beloved brands of the future, in the absence of access to billions of dollars in advertising and high-priced consulting resources that larger corporates can rely on.
She is committed to helping businesses access and enjoy the benefits that large corporates take for granted by bringing the strategic expertise, experience and methods they need for sustainable growth.