Sparkle is not your average microfinance bank. Built for the modern Nigerian. Sparkle offers a full financial experience through a clean, intuitive app. Spending, saving, and managing money the way it should work in 2026.
But even the best digital product faces one stubborn challenge: getting people to cross the line from awareness to action. You can run campaigns, target ads, and build the most seamless onboarding flow in the market. None of it compares to the moment a real person looks someone in the eye, puts a phone in their hand, and walks them through downloading the app right there and then.
That’s exactly what Sparkle needed. And that’s exactly what they came to Scalein for.
Sparkle was showing up at events where their audience already was. First, a Padel tournament in Lagos; it was a high-energy sporting event co-hosted with Magic Padel, drawing exactly the kind of active, aspirational Nigerians Sparkle was built for. Then a women’s financial empowerment event called “The Mum Fund“ where Sparkle came in as headline sponsor- a deliberate choice for a brand. It was a different crowd, but the same opportunity: a room full of people who could become Sparkle users before they left.
The ask was straightforward but demanding. Deploy field agents on the ground at each event. Engage attendees in real conversations. Get them to download and sign up for Sparkle on the spot, not later, not after a follow-up email, right there in the moment.
The challenge with field activation isn’t finding people who can talk. It’s finding people who can learn a product fast enough to represent it credibly, adapt their pitch to whoever is standing in front of them, and close without making it feel like a close. At a live event, you don’t get second chances, and things are running very fast
Scalein deployed a team of field agents for both activations who were briefed, trained on Sparkle’s product, and prepared to operate independently on the ground.
What Imisi Onipede, Sparkle’s contact throughout both engagements, noticed most wasn’t the agents’ enthusiasm. It was their speed of readiness. In the lead-up to each event, the team absorbed everything they needed to know about the product and showed up equipped.
At both the Padel tournament and the mum event, agents worked the floor, identifying the right moments to approach- two very different events, two very different audiences, but the same quality of execution.
The most valuable moment in any product adoption journey is when someone is already in a good mood, already engaged, and already surrounded by your brand. Sparkle put themselves in those rooms. Scalein made sure they had the right people to capitalize on it.
Downloads happened. Signups happened. And Sparkle walked away from both events with new users who converted not because of a retargeting ad they saw three days later but because someone was there, in person, ready to make it easy.
“How quickly the team threw themselves into learning everything they needed to and did it within the time they had.”
— Imisi Onipede, Sparkle