Jazzmene Ford is the marketing and senior brand manager for African Pride. In that role she focuses on determining the trajectory of the company through long-term planning.
As an innovative thinker, she studies industry trends and keeps the legacy hair care brand in the forefront of leading haircare products.
Ford opened up about her overall mission for African Pride and how technology plays a role.
What is your vision for the company?
African Pride is a legacy brand. This is such a crowded space, this is an ever-evolving space, and every day there’s a new brand that’s being thrust in our faces. We’re in a space where consumers demand innovation, and they want to see something new. There are a lot of new tools and a lot of players.
Being a legacy brand, you have to remain top of mind. It’s all about maintaining your relevancy amongst all the new kids. I’ve been in the legacy space [and] I haven’t been given the opportunity yet to work on one of the new brands, but I’m very proud of the work I’ve done in the legacy space because this space pushes you to be creative and pushes you to think outside the box because you’re trying to fight to stay in the conversation.
Right now for African Pride, it’s all about staying in the conversation and making sure that we remain relevant and top of mind. That is my focus right now staying fresh and hit.
What do you think will be the future of the hair care industry?
Technology is playing a major role. Gen Z is kind of leading the wave and the trend right now and setting the tone. For a while, we kind of drove our feet, but now we were playing catch up to stay ahead of the trends.
If social media isn’t talking about, you’re not hot so you have to have a very airtight approach to your social tactics [by] making sure that you are staying innovative and staying on trend as it pertains to those social conversations, content marketing, and the type of content that you deploy.
Technology is playing a major role, even in how we think about creating media. We even had conversations about the emergence of AI. Such as, do we even need real models and campaigns and shoots? Are we going to the store? It’s such a scary time, but it’s such a different time. It’s influencing how we think about bringing news to the forefront of consumers. Technology is changing the landscape, and I think it’s going to continue to have a major impact on beauty. You’re going to have a very tight digital plan and make sure that you’re giving the consumers all those tools and gadgets and how they are consuming information.
