Neo Media and Marketing Limited is a service driven marketing communications agency that offers Public Relations, Event Management and Experiential Marketing. The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Mr. Ehi Braimah shared with www.marketingspace.com.ng the solutions to the challenges facing the Nigerian Marketing Communication Industry and other relevant issues. Excerpts…
What is your general assessment of the Nigerian Marketing Communication industry as regards building brands, products and services?
The industry is still very relevant to brand building. The Nigerian marketing communication industry is still very active despite the economic downturn which has affected a couple of businesses. Because when you do not have a fat brief the way they use to come whether It is advertising, public relations or outdoor. There has been a lot of contraction, clients’ budgets have seriously been scaled down and that has really affected the industry. But that has not affected the quality of work that they do and the way to build brands is to always engaging with industry practitioners. What is happening now is that communication is being integrated fully across different channels whether is PR, advertising, experiential or out-of-home, they all need to work together.
I think there will be a time that this recession will go away because I know of a multinational client whose outdoor advertising budgets was reduced by 75 percent. So, you can imaging the impact on agencies in terms of revenue but I know we will survive it. I am very confident that the good times will return. Fundamentally, there is a concern in terms of how we engage higher agencies from outside of Nigeria to come and work here. Recently, PRCAN had to issue a statement over what the Federal Ministry of Finance did by hiring a foreign PR firm; I will say this is not right.
I think everybody should be given equal opportunity and what is the idea of being proudly Nigerian when you leave Nigerian agencies and you are going outside to do the job. It does not make sense when you have capable agencies here that can do the job. So, all these issues are what the industry needs to review and see how we can engage in a very proactive manner. I know we have some dynamic agencies in the country that can handle different briefs.
You have been in this industry for couple of years, how would you evaluate the level of professionalism especially in PR segment of the industry?
I will say it again and again that we have very capable agencies and down-to-earth professionals that can compete favourably with any practitioner or agency around the world. In terms of quality of services that are provided by practitioners that is why we have PRCAN so that we can come together and understand how we should work for our clients in the standard we need to put in place. By my own assessment the agencies are very competent and they deliver on these jobs even when there are knowledge gaps.
We think of how to overcome these gaps that is why we have a master class in PRCAN to build competencies and see what the standards are in elsewhere. We invite people to coach us because we believe that learning is continuous so that is what we do in the master class. This is an avenue for members to understand what is happening around the world and how we can serve our clients better with new knowledge and best practice.
There have been some attempts by the Nigerian government to manage the country’s image but these attempts have not yielded any result, how best can PR practitioners proffer solution?
There is always a problem because the government prefers to discuss with the foreign agencies to come and manage our image. Who do you think will manage the country’s image better? Is it not the Nigerian agencies? But having said that, we know the problem facing us in Nigeria, lots of them are self inflicted and those problems did lots of damage to our reputation as a people and as a country. Fundamentally, what do you think Nigeria is known for? If you want to build a brand you have to be known for something.
If you want to manage a reputation you must distinguish yourself in a particular field. What can we say today that Nigeria is known for? But I think one area we can work hard to polish our image is to focus on agriculture not oil because with the way technology is changing, very soon, this oil will become a liability. When you see what is happening with electric cars, which is gradually growing, demand for oil will be going down. If we can focus on agriculture which is beginning to happen, Nigeria can become the food basket of Africa and that is what the whole world will know us for. So, that is actually one way to lay claim to reputation in very positive and vibrant image; when we stand out in particular area.
When you talk about Brazil today, you will mainly talk about its football nature. When you talk about Coca-cola, you will say, it has a great taste. When you talk about America, you talk about their democracy. Can Nigeria be known as a tourist destination? No, because of security challenges, poor power supply and bad roads. But there are some countries that are big and they are known for tourism, Kenya for example even the United Kingdom.
So, tourism in these countries are very big. A country has to be known for something in order to attract positive news itself. I did not mention corruption in Nigeria because I know corruption is where but as a people we should be able to advise ourselves. Corruption in this country is deep rooted; it has begun to undermine everything we do in this country. And as a people, we know what is right and wrong. It is like the elite versus the vulnerable people in this country. By the time we bridge this gap, Nigeria will become a better country because this country is so blessed in every area.
In actual fact, if Nigeria can realize its full potential, it will become a big threat to most of the so called first world countries. It is a shame that our leaders do not have the vision, the foresight to really make this country realize its full potentials. And it is such a big shame.
We realized that your agency has handled various briefs for multinational companies; can you tell us some of these briefs you have handled so far?
We have handled so many briefs. For Nigerian Breweries essentially, we have done a couple of jobs like Gulder Ultimate Search, Maltina Dance Hall and Star Quest. These briefs are very engaging and interesting because it takes us around the country. We have done a couple of jobs for Coca-cola, we brought a double deca bus from the United States that we use for activation for Coca-cola to create experience for young people who can sing because we had a studio.
We also do Public Relations for Unilever and couple of other clients as well. We handled Cowbell Mathematics competition for so many years. So, all these programmes are designed to promote talents and advancing knowledge like the mathematics competition. You could see we are trying to do things that could help students or talents.
For every sponsorship and activation, there is always objective, it could be a commercial objective but most importantly we are also trying to either promote talents as we did with Star Quest, Gulder Ultimate Search and Maltina Dance Hall. You could see families dancing; they have so many reasons to dance because it brings families together.
There is also the energetic part which keeps every family fit to dance. Those are some of the projects that we have done in the past. We are planning to do new things that are going to speak for us more.
Do you have any plan to have international affiliation in the nearest future?
We don’t have any problem with affiliation. It depends on the focus of every agency owner as regards goals and objectives they have set for themselves. For now, we are okay with the way we are but we have people we work with abroad not agencies per say but individuals that we collaborate with when we have to work on some briefs where we also tap into their knowledge and experience we do that from time to time.
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We have not really thought about affiliation but we can collaborate. If I have a big project I can speak to agencies abroad, we come together and collaborate. I have spoken to an agency in the UK in the past, Watermark Event Management on how we can work together and that is the example of what I am talking about. And there are some individual that we have worked together in the past on PR and activation bases.
