Making a deeply rooted African brand relevant to a dynamic West African market
With the challenge of making the deeply rooted African brand Uniwax more relevant to its African consumers in a dynamic West African market, we at Mattmo have been working hard on its repositioning over the past year. This reflects the intrinsic values of Uniwax’s creativity and pride as part of the Ivorian culture.
To deepen the cultural relevance required for this repositioning, we started with an extensive ‘culture scan’ in Ivory Coast. We spoke to local creatives, fashion designers, photographers, furniture designers and architects and visited culturally relevant places to feel the rich Ivorian culture from within and understand the local context. This cultural insight formed the foundation for the new positioning that reflects the values and aspirations of Uniwax wearers: creativity, cultural pride and “joie de vivre”.
We started with an extensive ‘culture scan’ in Ivory Coast
With these insights, a transition has been made from a product-oriented brand approach to a radical consumer-oriented approach. Within Uniwax’s marketing strategy, relevance for the consumer is now central and we are getting closer to the skin of our consumers.
We recently went to Ivory Coast again for a week for a photo and video shoot of the New Uniwax Collection 2024. With a local team we photographed at an undiscovered location in the mangrove forests – a beautiful nature where even many local Ivorians still didn’t know about it. The resulting campaign images on 50 billboards in Abidjan are right in front of the Ivorian consumer.
These typically locally designed and produced African fabrics can of course also be ordered online via the Uniwax webshop in the Netherlands. We are proud that we have been able to develop this repositioning, which brings Uniwax close to its ‘cultural root’ and forges a strong bond with its consumers in Ivory Coast, together with the Ivorian Uniwax team in Abidjan.