Our CXO + Founder Teju Aluko sat down with Voyage LA to talk all things Branperience and her journey!
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Today we’d like to introduce you to Teju Aluko.
Hi Teju, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m an intuitive empath from Milwaukee, Wisconsin who started Branperience in October 2018 in a coffee shop in Downtown Milwaukee with my two daughters, who were 13 & 15 at the time, after signing our first client in a meeting from a referral. We had no clue how we were going to do this on our own but, we – were willing to give it all we had, because it was all we had.
Although I’d spent the better half of my career, 12 years at that time, in the Branding and Marketing space in various industries and leading organizations from corporate retail to professional sports – I was now going to apply thought leadership and my approach and that I developed, which was influenced by those professional and personal experiences I’ve experienced along the way. The goal was to build Brand Experiences, not just campaigns and trends, that could compete with the “big guys”. I planned to partner with small businesses to sustain their experiences, despite dramatic budget & capacity differences, through memorable Brand Experiences fueled by feelings and emotions.
I had been working on this approach for about four years (2014) since I walked out of my corporate retail job of seven years with no plan, no job, no nothing – just thoughts, feelings, emotions, bills, and two kids. My educational background is in Business, Sport Management, Behavioral Science, and Psychology so I used those academic experiences and the countless hours of research, testing, tears, and laughs to refine my unique approach.
So in that coffee shop, we took all those experiences – professional, educational, and personal – and began to build Brand Experiences that emotionally impact the way we consumed brands – which influences our decisions and the way we use, buy, advocate, invest, support….everything with said brands and businesses. And that’s what we’ve been doing since that day.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?