Nissan Africa managing director Mike Whitfield has hailed the company’s inaugural corporate communications masterclass session as a resounding success.
Attended by 25 high level communicators from Nissan
dealerships in seven African countries; the key markets of Angola, Senegal,
Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the three
masterclasses blended cutting edge practical learning with hands on experience
of the award winning all new built of more Nissan Navara.
“We have the best people and the best products,” says
Whitfield, “but we also have to be the best in telling our story too – both
within the company and across the continent.”
Katherine Zachary, Nissan’s regional vice president for
communications, agrees. Opening the masterclass from Paris, France, where she
is based, she told the delegates that corporate communication was not a
‘nice-to-have’ but a ‘must have’.
“We do more than just tell stories, we analyse other news,
we see potential problems and we identify opportunities.”
The masterclass, conceptualised by Nissan Africa’s head of
communications Ramy Mohareb and Nthabiseng Motsepe was facilitated by former
newspaper editor Kevin Ritchie and former motoring journalist and automotive
industry specialist Leo Kok.
“The brief was to cover everything from understanding how
newsrooms work and effective communication with the media all the way to crisis
management, hosting press releases and preparing executives to be interviewed
by journalists, whether in person, in studio or, as is becoming more
commonplace, virtually via Zoom,” said Motsepe.
“We achieved what we set out to do and a lot more,” said
Mohareb, “it provided us with the opportunity to get together, to put faces to
names after the COVID 19 lockdown, to brush up our skills and also learn more
about Nissan.
“We were able to take the Navara off road, understand the
cutting-edge Nissan Qashqai and hear from our marketing experts what their
plans are for the years ahead as well as receive a top-level briefing on the
very exciting Nissan Customer Experience programme that is being rolled out.”
Africa, said Whitfield, comprised 54 very different markets,
which was precisely why the company had set up its unique Regional business
Unit at the end of 2020 with its dual headquarters in Cairo and Pretoria.
“Telling the Nissan Africa story can’t be effectively done
from just one country on the continent any more than it can be done outside the
continent. As Africans, we know that if you want to go fast, you go alone, but
if you want to go far, you go together. Bringing in our partners from these
markets for this pilot project is part of that philosophy.”
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