Creating a new Africa inspired by colours with leading paint company

When David Wright, the new Managing Director of Chemical and Allied Products Plc (CAP), Nigeria’s largest decorative paint group, walked into our office, we had no idea what to expect. As it turns out, this British veteran of the global paint industry had just moved to Lagos, Nigeria with a clear mandate to “build a regional paint powerhouse in sub-Sahara Africa.”

Wow, very cool! David had gotten our name through a mutual contact and heard that we specialized in complex international branding projects, mainly B2B but also B2C. We found his strategic thinking, open mindedness and warm approach to empowering people to be inspiring. Within weeks we were on a plane to Lagos (a city of 20 million in a country of 200 million) for branding workshops with his amazingly talented and energetic team.

Work that works across borders
While we are certainly not experts on Africa, the branding principles and methods we apply are universal. The challenge here, as in most projects, was to listen, learn fast and dive into the specific market dynamics and channels.

Streamlining the brand portfolio
Founded some 60 years ago, CAP Plc is today a publicly traded group on the Nigerian Stock Exchange that oversees a portfolio of locally licensed brands such as Dulux, Sandtex and Hammerite. But it also has ambitions to build its corporate brand and fine tune its portfolio, including its own brand Caplux. The work has involved setting clear and differentiating strategies for the corporate brand and repositioning several other brands to give them clearly defined categories, avoid brand cannibalization issues. The next step is looking at the brand identities, stories and brand propositions.

"Open did a great job of collaborating well with my team and helping us to sort out a number of strategic as well as creative challenges. We look forward to continuing our collaboration, even though we are thousands of miles away."

A spirit of collaboration
“I really feel that Open did a great job of collaborating well with my team and helping us to sort out a number of strategic as well as creative challenges,” says David Wright. “We look forward to continuing our collaboration and find it smooth to work together, even though we are thousands of miles away.”

Says Gunilla Lundström, CEO and Brand Strategist at Open: “The level of energy, engagement and hospitality shown by David and his team has been off the charts. I’m not exaggerating to say that this is a super fun and interesting project for us. Nigeria is an interesting market where development skips traditional media and where the digital maturity is very high.”