In many circles he is known as ‘Mr Marketing’ and judging from what he has achieved so far in the field, it is not difficult to see why he has acquired that tag.

Carlo Redwood, FLOW’s head of marketing and products has been fascinated by the line of work that he does now, since his boyhood days.

The former Wolmer’s Boys School Manning Cup footballer, who also played junior level football for Jamaica College during the three years that he attended the legendary institution, made his mind up from early that everything he liked had to be achieved through marketing.

Straightaway, the ingredients that would go into the skills that it took to be a good marketer — to be able to create the desire for a product or a brand, and to be able to drive and make a brand popular on a national or global scale — were being assembled.

“I wanted from very early to be a marketer, to try and get into advertising, commercials and how to motivate people to buy a particular product or support a brand,” Redwood told the Jamaica Observer.

Being one of the executives who was saddled with additional responsibilities arising from the recent merger by FLOW, and his former employer LIME, Redwood has outlined major improvements ahead, backgrounding it with his personal target achievements.

“The idea of moving to FLOW is something we are excited about. It creates a new opportunity for the company to connect with Jamaica to deliver new experiences and new products to Jamaica that have never been here before. For example, the most exciting thing is how do we create opportunities to bundle TV, broadband, mobile and fixed line together for one price and deliver the same value that people knew LIME for. There are so many opportunities that it creates from a product standpoint.

“We will be introducing a new line of bundled products within weeks. What you will start to see is a combination of products that’s packaged together at one affordable price. That’s never happened in Jamaica before so that’s going to excite the market, it’s going to create a new dynamic in the market and FLOW, as the only quad play provider in Jamaica right now, will be delivering that soon and we know that customers are going to be blown away by the value that they see coming from that. Being able to have all of these in one company is going to be an amazing experience for the customer,” Redwood told the Sunday Observer.

Over the next few months, Redwood will spend time trying to deliver and find new ways of connecting with customers.

“Technology is a big part to that. Now, people are engaging and getting information in different ways. One of the things that we have focused on heavily over the last couple of years is online — social media — that’s certainly a new dynamic from a marketing perspective. No longer is the younger customer going to traditional media for their entertainment or for information — they are going online, so we have to spend a lot of investment and a lot of time understanding the dynamics of online, coming up with strategies to do that. We have about half a million Facebook fans now and we are looking to grow that to over a million quickly, in order to create a full-blown marketing strategy and investment in dealing with how you engage customers … not only about communicating with them, but engaging them — you have to have a two-way relationship with them, which is different from how marketing used to be. That’s the new way of marketing going forward.

“How we treat TV is going to be different. It has to be connected with online, so for example when you leave your house you do so with channels on your phone,” Redwood stated.

Redwood recognises that remnants of the ghost of the former Cable & Wireless, which evolved into LIME, lingered for a while as Jamaicans came to terms with the offerings.

He, along with other members of the company’s management, had to dig deep to soothe public discontent and restore confidence in the system.

“Coming through the door almost three years ago, the brand I thought was struggling with connecting with the average Jamaican … creating an emotional connection with the consumer. It had a lot of issues from the past that had to be overcome and it only could be overcome by rebuilding a relationship with Jamaicans — Jamaicans lost trust obviously from the past, based upon a monopoly that we were coming from.

“For me, the first thing I did was talk to the customers — you need to understand exactly what they felt about the brand, what they didn’t like, what the brand wasn’t doing, then coming up with a strategy for that.

“The first real success was signing the comedians — Ity and Fancy Cat, Pretty Boy Floyd, Iceman Anderson … that approach allowed a unique way of communicating and connecting with the average Jamaican. Being the first brand to do that was a major deal, as it changed the dynamic of how LIME was viewed, in terms of advertising, breaking new ground in terms of how we advertise in Jamaica, using comedy, as Jamaicans love to laugh, and creating a new dynamic around advertising in Jamaica.

“That moved into other things, like how would the brand be bold in using things that Jamaicans love to connect with them, from a community level. Again, that started our foray into football. That’s when we took up the sponsorship of schoolboy football and became the title sponsor, and subsequent to that introduce Super Cup. That’s based on what customers told us. That would be another major accomplishment. We had not seen the type of numbers and patron support you saw over a four-week period, apart from Reggae Boyz.”

With the responsibility demanding, Redwood is mindful of the personal suffering that could emerge, if his time is not managed properly. But stress, he believes, is a mindset, one that he does not try to take on. Coming from a football background in which he always wanted to beat his competitors, he has taken that in the marketplace where his desire is always to be ahead of his competitor, without allowing stress to be the dividing line.

“I am more about winning and trying to stay way ahead of anything I do,” he stated, revealing that his major challenge from a business perspective is balancing the scales.

“One of my major challenges always is sometimes what the business wants versus what is best for the customer, and sometimes those things are not aligned. The business is about making money, delivering profits, but then there is the consumer and understanding what the consumer is going through, what he needs … it doesn’t necessarily work, so sometimes it’s a challenge being the one in the middle who has to speak for the customer, and therefore you have that battle sometimes.

“My major professional disappointment would be that I always want to deliver more, and delivering more has benefits for the business. So the more I am able to get customers to support the brand or the products that we sell, the more the opportunities for the business to be in a better position to retain people. We have done well and grown fast, but I always want to do more,” Redwood said.

Recent changes:

The Kingstonian reconises that technology is changing fast… from a situation one time when sending one text message or making a phone call was enough, to an age where everybody wants access to the Internet.

“No matter what part of the island you are in, in the hills or elsewhere, they feel that they should be able to connect to the Internet seamlessly, which is a challenge,” Redwood contends. “Technology and the desire for technology is moving faster than we are able to deliver it. It is something that we are taking on head on,” he said.

Revealing that he had not written off getting involved in the administration of football, Redwood said that Jamaica was not doing the best possible job with marketing not just football, but other sport, and hopes to make a contribution, from a marketing perspective, to correct that one day.

The married father of son Zaine is also a crusader for parents blending work with family life in a way that both personal and professional institutions may benefit.

“The work-life balance is always a challenge. Sometimes you spend too much time focusing on work and not enough on the family, so that’s something I try to be better at. Your kids are young for a short time and so spending quality time with my sons is something that is important to me. You cannot leave your family behind. Business is what you work for, but that can change at any moment — your family is always there and has to be most important,” he said.