Innovation Village recently visited Ghana and met with Beryl Agyekum, the enterprising young CEO of EchoHouse, a youth agency that works with great companies like Vodafone, Guinness and many more. Here are the answers to some of the questions we asked.
Innovation Village: Tell us about EchoHouse and Beryl Agyekum.
Beryl Agyekum: Beryl Agyekum is simply a civil engineer turned marketer. A God-fearing, ambitious, fun-loving, jovial and people-loving 29 year old young lady who started Echohouse as a magazine (Echo Magazine) in 2008. This was while I was in the university; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Seven years later, Echohouse has grown into a full youth agency employing 35 young people housing 7 distinct departments.
These departments are:
- DigIT(the digital wing of Echohouse where we handle the social media platforms of brands like Vodafone, Vodafone Smirnoff, Guinness ,Total,etc.),
- BTL Marketing, Branding and Events department(Activations for brands and Own events/Client events organization),
- Rogue Lens(Photography, videography and production Unit(Zone three 6,the live session)),Sales and marketing department(sale of client products to specified target markets),
- Media department (Echo magazine, kuulpeeps.com, Nitro(online radio)) and
- our growing PR and ATL departments.
Innovation Village: How did you discover this niche in the market?
Beryl Agyekum: The network of team members were the discovery point of Echo’s niche.
With a pool of over 22 campus teams with over 50 members each as well as a wide network of alumni, they proved to me that there is a big gap between brands and young people. I realized this gap was so wide that it was hard to make any attempts to fill. What Echohouse did was to bring the youth and the brands to meet at an “emotional” point where the young people will not feel they are being pushed to buy but will make a purchase because they love the brand and feel the brand has their youthful needs at heart. This has worked out perfectly with Vodafone X as an obvious example.
Innovation Village: What were the issues you faced trying to sell Echohouse to potential clients?
Beryl Agyekum: Usually the key decision makers for most big brands are grown up people who have a lot of misconceptions about young people. They think young people are careless, they think young people are not organized, they also think being on social media every time is a waste of time and resources. One of the funniest I realized is that, they are of the view that young people” do not have money”.
Also, the investment the business had to make to break into the youth space was a challenge.
But what I did is with the help of God and my hardworking team, we broke into the client space and we proved to them that young people even with their limited purchasing power can still drive massive revenue for a business
Innovation Village: What would you say is the USP for EchoHouse?
Beryl Agyekum: The Unique selling point for Echohouse is the youth and the young at heart.
We have grown to understand the playground of the youth. Everyday ECHO grows “younger”. We practically live in the youth space with the help of our campus team members and alumni.
This is because the youth will grow with the brand that becomes their everyday brand or first love.
Also the youth have gradually become the trendsetters. Our lifestyle trickles “up” to the older generation. Our parents dress up like us and are on Facebook and WhatsApp now because they want to be “NEW SCHOOL”. Some of them are even on Instagram now. And the look of joy on their faces when they feel young proves this.
If a brand wins over the youth, they have won over a large percentage of the population.
Innovation Village: Tell us about some of the exciting projects Echohouse has handled?
Beryl Agyekum: Echohouse has 2 main categories of projects.
We exist to make people excited.
I have gradually become the person who becomes happy when I see that we have succeeded in making people happy.
I measure excitement with the joy in the eyes of the people at our events, social media feedback and the way people affiliate themselves with our events. The memories captured are priceless.
We have our Own Events (Echohouse owned events, usually the campus teams come up with these events in various brainstorm sessions) as well as Events we do for our clients (Vodafone, Guinness amongst others)
For own events, we have Tidalrave (the biggest beach event in Ghana during the summer vacation), Epilogo, Frathouse, LightsUp and Echo Academy (An exciting discourse community where young people meet up with their mentors)
For Client events, we have done the Samsung Galaxy pocket launch concert with Sarkodie on Legon campus at Pentagon, 3 Vodafone X concerts (UCC.Legon, Koforidua Polytechnic), Planet X, and Blackout for Guinness and Red Flag for Smirn Off) amongst others
Innovation Village: What does Echohouse have for the future? Any plans for expansion?
Beryl Agyekum: Maybe the question should be what plans the future has for Echohouse. Every tomorrow is a future for ECHO. And it’s our todays that determine our tomorrows (future).As at now, every day the team is cooking up something new and exciting. Every day we surprise ourselves with how unlimitless our youthful energies and passions are. Everything here in Ghana can be made into a business. I believe in opportunities: Everything is yet to be done. Maybe tomorrow you will hear of the ECHO farm, the Echo Real Estates. We may just evolve into a town of our own in Ghana. We also work towards making the life span of all our existing ECHO assets sustainable enough to make it into our future. So the future should make plans for Echohouse because the expansion may be too enormous to fit into it.
