IIeX NA 2019 Conference Series – Sheila Akinnusi – Nedbank

Welcome to the 2019 IIEX North America Conference Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Sheila Akinnusi, Senior Manager of Consumer Marketing and Insights at Nedbank. Contact Sheila Online: LinkedIn Nedbank [00:00] Sheila Akinnusi with Nedbank.  They are a monstrously massive, large bank out of Africa.  She attended IIeX this year with the intent of finding out what the rest of the world was doing as well as bringing home some best practices.  Again, I just want to underscore how good this event is for connecting your brand with, specifically technology, with perspective buyers. One of the things I really struggle with, as an exhibitor of events for a few decades, is nobody is usually there with a fire to purchase right away.  Instead, it feels a lot more like the long tail but, having said that, it is really a good way to put a face to a name, especially if you’ve been interacting on social with attendees. Anyway, I wanted to offer that piece of advice. If I was going to be exhibiting, I would be looking at the companies that are going to be attending and that is a published list.  And then I would be reaching out to them on social, creating some level of connection – not in the way of like asking but in the way of properly interacting. Like see the things they’re posting about; find out what’s interesting to them. And then, you actually have some context for your conversations. Hope you enjoy the episode. I certainly did. Sheila, thank you so much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast.        [01:20]   Sheila with Nedbank, South Africa.  You live in Johannesburg. So, this is your first event at IIeX.  Is that correct? [01:28]   It is, it is. [01:31] Tell me a little bit about what you do there. [01:32] So, I’m a Senior Market Research Manager in a large, I suppose, corporate bank.  I do everything from strategic insighting, research projects, consulting internally, managing vendors, governance.  Being a bank, obviously, there’s a lot of that; there’s a whole lot, whole lot. Jack-of-all-trades as researchers are known for.  And, yeah, I get sent to places like this to find out what the rest of the world is doing and bring home some best practice and bold leadership to instrument. [02:02]    So, today is Day 2.  Do you have any big takeaways from the first day? [02:07] I did actually.  I think what was most encouraging is that we’re challenged by the same things even way across the ocean, which is quite encouraging for me.  I did feel like I was going to be bit overwhelmed. but I’m actually feeling quite comfortable in a crowd, which is really, really nice. The sessions that I attended were really quite interesting was the online influence one, how to leverage social media influences for your brand.  That was pretty cool. Yeah, the Women in Research event was really nice. Met lots of great people. I think everyone in the States is quite open. You guys are go-getters and just getting stuff done. It’s really nice to see. [02:44]