Brand relevance in a volatile market is decided in the shopping basket, not the media plan. When the naira slides, fuel jumps and the weekly market budget stops stretching, Nigerian consumers re-audition every brand they buy — and loyalty gives way to calculation. The brands that stay relevant do three things well: they track the consumer’s changing maths, they adjust offer and message quickly, and they keep showing up. This essay is about how that works.
The shrinking basket: how volatility rewrites your consumer’s maths
Start with the basket, because that is where volatility becomes real. A household that filled a trolley two years ago now fills a bag. The list is shorter, the pack sizes are smaller, and whole categories have quietly dropped off. None of this is abstract. It is a woman in an open market doing arithmetic out loud in front of the stall, item by item, while the seller waits.
Volatility compresses that arithmetic into weeks. A fuel price move changes her transport cost, which changes how often she shops and how much she carries home. A naira move changes the landed cost of anything imported, which moves the shelf price of half her list. Her income has usually not moved at all. Something has to leave the basket, and every brand in it is a candidate.
So the useful question is not “how is our share of voice” but “are we still on the list”. Relevance in a volatile market is the answer to that question, asked weekly and answered at the point of purchase. We covered the budget side of this squeeze in our playbook on marketing through inflation in Nigeria; this essay is about the consumer side, which moves faster and forgives less.
Why does brand loyalty fall during inflation in Nigeria?
Because loyalty was always a habit plus a margin of comfort, and inflation removes the margin. When money is easy, a consumer pays a small premium not to think. When money is tight, thinking is free and the premium is visible. Every purchase becomes a short negotiation: what does this brand give me that the cheaper one does not?
I hear a version of the same sentence in client meetings every quarter: “our consumers still love us, they just can’t afford us right now.” It is offered as reassurance. It is actually the problem statement. Affection that does not survive a price check is not loyalty; it is nostalgia with a budget cap.
What replaces loyalty is calculation — value per naira, per wash, per serving, per gigabyte. Nigerian consumers become experts in unit economics faster than most brand teams do. They know which detergent stretches, which seasoning goes further, which network’s data quietly disappears. A brand still talking about heritage while its consumer is doing long division sounds like it is not listening.
The useful news is that calculation can be won. A brand that shows its working — honest pack sizes, visible value, a price ladder that respects the consumer’s week — earns a rational place in the basket. That place is sturdier than sentiment ever was.
“ Loyalty did not die. It became conditional — and conditions can be met.
When category rules reset: premium brands in a sachet economy
Volatility shrinks the basket, then does something stranger: it rewrites who competes with whom. A premium brand that spent a decade positioned against other premium brands looks up and finds its real competitor is a sachet, a refill pouch, an open-market substitute, or simply doing without. The category walls it paid to build are gone.
We have watched this play out in lager, dairy, personal care and seasoning. Treat the small pack as a demotion and you will misread the moment. In a squeeze, the sachet is how a category keeps a consumer who would otherwise leave it entirely — she is not abandoning the brand world, she is negotiating her way to staying in it.
The expensive mistake is defending the old rules: holding price, holding pack, holding tone, and calling it brand protection. Six months later the consumer has learned a new behaviour and learned that it works. Winning her back at that point costs far more than meeting her halfway would have.
How do you keep a brand relevant in a volatile market?
The brands that hold relevance through a squeeze do three things, and they do them at operating tempo rather than planning-cycle tempo.
- Track the consumer’s changing maths. Not an annual usage-and-attitude study — monthly signals. Pack-mix shifts, rate of sale by price point, distributor call reports, what the market women say is moving. If her arithmetic changed in March, you cannot discover it in November.
- Adjust the offer and the message quickly. A price-pack architecture that gives a squeezed consumer an honest way to stay, and communication that says the price out loud and makes the value visible. This is brand strategy work, not a promo reflex — the ladder has to protect equity while it meets the wallet.
- Keep showing up, consistently. Steady presence at a sustainable weight beats silence followed by a December shout. The consumer is re-deciding weekly; a brand that is absent from that decision loses it by default.
The rule we set in our earliest note on this subject still holds: be signal-positive — fewer messages, repeated with more conviction, refreshed more often. Volatile markets punish brands that change their story every quarter almost as hard as they punish brands that go quiet.
“ Add clarity faster than the market adds noise.
Relevance is earned in culture, not bought in media
Media weight can rent attention. It cannot make a brand matter. Relevance is granted by the culture your consumer lives in — the humour, the music, the WhatsApp group commentary, the shared knowledge of how everyone is coping this month. In a squeeze that culture develops quickly: new slang for managing money, new pride in finding value, new jokes about prices. A brand that speaks this language accurately gets claimed by the people using it. A brand that mimics it from a distance gets screenshotted.
The test we apply to creative work is blunt: does this sound like it was made by people who shop where our consumer shops? That is why we treat cultural storytelling as a craft discipline with standards, not a tone-of-voice slide. In a volatile year, being “one of ours” is the strongest value argument a brand can make, because it is the one argument a cheaper competitor cannot copy overnight.
How Aikido Agency works on brand relevance
Relevance is one of the six challenges clients bring us, and it usually arrives in the same words: “we used to matter here, and the numbers say we are fading.” Our answer runs through the Katana System. Market Truth establishes what actually changed in the category’s economics. Human Truth maps the consumer’s new arithmetic and the behavioural triggers that still move her — the price points, occasions and cues where a decision can shift. Cultural Truth finds the spaces where the brand can participate honestly. Only then do we sharpen a strategy: one tension, one point of view, one single-minded proposition.
Two working habits matter here. Cultural intelligence sits inside diagnosis, not decoration — we go looking for what the consumer’s week actually looks like before anyone writes a line. And the work is judged weekly on commercial movement: rate of sale, pack mix, repeat purchase — not sentiment alone. Founders sit on every brief, and work that cannot defend itself commercially does not ship. Relevance recovered in the sales line is the only kind the board will fund next year.
What working with Aikido Agency looks like
Clients in FMCG, telecoms, financial services, food and beverage, and beauty usually arrive mid-squeeze: a premium brand losing ground to small packs, a bank watching younger customers drift to fintechs, a category leader whose tracking says “trusted” while the basket says “dropped”. We start with the business problem, not a credentials deck.
Tell us the business challenge, the target and the timeline, and we will come back within 48 hours with a point of view and next steps. Reach us at hello@aikido.ng · +234 810 960 5970 · 3b Felicia Koleosho Street, Opebi, Lagos — or start the conversation here.
Brand relevance in volatile markets: questions we hear
How do brands stay relevant during inflation in Nigeria?
By tracking the consumer’s changing maths and adjusting quickly. That means monthly reads of pack mix and price-point movement, a price-pack ladder that gives squeezed consumers an honest way to stay, and consistent presence rather than silence followed by a burst. Brands that keep earning their place in a shrinking basket — on value the consumer can actually see — hold share that discounting alone cannot buy.
Why do consumers switch brands when prices rise?
Because loyalty is a habit plus a margin of comfort, and rising prices remove the margin. Once every purchase is recalculated — value per naira, per serving, per wash — a familiar brand has to win that arithmetic, not merely be remembered fondly. Consumers switch when a cheaper option does the job and the loyal brand gives them no affordable way to stay.
Should a brand keep advertising in a volatile market?
Yes, at a sustainable weight. Going quiet saves money for a quarter and hands the consumer’s weekly re-decision to whoever stayed visible. Steady, clear messaging — fewer things said with more conviction — usually outperforms silence followed by a heavy December burst. If the budget is under real pressure, cut waste and duplication before you cut presence.
What makes Aikido Agency different on brand relevance?
We treat relevance as a commercial problem, not an image problem. Diagnosis runs through the Katana System — market, human and cultural truth before any creative — and the work is judged weekly on rate of sale, pack mix and repeat purchase. Founders sit on every brief, and cultural intelligence is built into strategy rather than added on as decoration.
— Dr. Tayo Oyedeji, Co-Founder & CEO, Aikido Agency.