Zenith Bank: The Marketing of an Initial Public Offering

This case is useful in teaching marketing strategy as part of a marketing course. It can also be used to teach promotional strategy. Only one week into Zenith Bank of Nigeria’s initial public offering (IPO), Jim Ovia and his management team faced a new regulation that required that the capital base of banks be raised from (Nigerian naira) NGN2 billion to NGN25 billion. They needed to review their approach to marketing the IPO and try something outside the traditional marketing campaigns of public offerings in Nigeria. The highest amount ever realized from the Nigerian capital market was NGN11 billion. The new regulations resulted in Ovia’s needing to revise the marketing objectives for the IPO from about NGN9 billion to an unspecified amount that would increase the bank shareholders’ fund to well over the minimum requirement of NGN25 billion.