Advertising plays a crucial role in marketing communications mix – Omoba Adewale

‘How Flour Mills gave us first break’ By Olayinka Ajayi Omoba Segun Adewale is the Group Managing Director of Integrated Marketing Communications, IMC, a marketing communications group that has 24-7imc, Proview, Hurricane and Mediamatryx as subsidiaries. The group clocked 10 in June and is rolling out drums in celebration this month. In this anniversary interview, Adewale speaks on his group and many other issues in advertising. You have been in business for 10 years now. How has the journey been? The journey has been very interesting and we thank God for everything. Like every other business in Nigeria, we have had our ups and downs. We started off without the luxury of having excess fund pumped into the business. We didn’t have the luxury of money allocated to the business, whereby every month, as managers of the business, you get into your office and read newspapers because you are guaranteed that in the next six months, you have funds to pay your overhead. What we did was management by evolvement. If it was N100 that we made in a month, we adjust our salaries, adjust our overheads to accommodate that particular amount. It wasn’t that as the CEO I was supposed to earn one million Naira or half a million Naira, when we didn’t have the money to get paid. But generally, as a company, we are bigger than what we were when we began operations 10 years ago and we give God the glory. Our agency has been steady in terms of progress and, I know that one day, 24-7 will handle MTN; one day, Nigerian Breweries will walk into this agency; one day, it will be our turn to drive any of the biggest brands in Nigeria. It is a vision. It has its own incubation period. And we are painstaking about it. What would you say accounted for your success? I must first of all credit our success to God . His grace has been and is still sufficient for us. Another reason for our success is the hardwork of our workforce. We have people in the agency that have a very strong attitude towards this business. They have been with us since we started this organization ten years ago and have gone through thick and thin and we appreciate them. We also attribute our success to our desire to ensure that we continue to give our clients the best. We credit ourselves as an agency that grow brands and not one that manage brands. We have not been over-adventurous. We have a number of clients that we painstakingly work with. And that is why it is not surprising that some of those clients that started with us in the last 10 years are still with us today. One major client, Flour Mills of Nigeria, has been very wonderful.The client stood by us during our trying period and is still there for us. That is why we have dedicated over 60 per cent of our workforce to the brand. . You have obviously had some ups and downs. Can you mention some of them? The major downside is the challenge we face in the industry and the challenges are many. As a young agency, we have had to struggle, working with local brands, not like ad agencies that have international affiliations, and the luxury of businesses thrown at their laps by their affiliated agencies. As a home-grown agency, we also have the challenge of dealing with companies that don’t have core marketing orientation. Having to convince such clients is not easy. And growing such clients has been quite a challenge. The other challenge was the recession we had in 2008, 2009 and 2010 that seriously affected the industry. During the period, especially in 2009, we did not get even one business, yet we had to continue to survive. We had to do some drastic things to survive, such as right sizing and even taking cuts in salaries by 50 per cent. It was so painful that you work with loyal staff, people who were dedicated to their work and you couldn’t pay them at the end of the month. But to the glory of God, we survived the period, paid all staff salaries that were overdue after the recession and we bounced back. Another challenge is the issue of staff turnover where you have to train staff only for them to move to other agencies. But we thank God that we are growing by the day and consistently and we are now 10 years in business. Can you mention your greatest moment in the business? That was when we won the pitch for Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc. Our agency was less than eight months old and we were invited to a pitch with all the biggest agencies in Nigeria then. When we got the brief, we held our hands together and prayed: ‘God, this is the first gift for us and the first break that we envisage. If we win this business, then we believe your hand is in this agency.’ We put everything we had into the pitch. That was the first written brief and the first pitch in the history of our business. All staff, about seven of us, went out of Lagos to do a brainstorming session. We did research and put everything into the pitch. We made the presentation to the then Marketing Director of the company, Mr. Felix Alao,. He was on his way out when we met him and he said: ‘Yes, you guys have only 40 minutes, let’s see what you can do.’ However, ten minutes into the presentation, he stood up and said: ‘Wait. I’m not the only person who is going to see this.’ He went and called the managing director and the people in sales to the boardroom. And the presentation that was to last 40 minutes lasted over four and a half hours. It was great. It was there and then the man said: ‘I have never seen an expose like this!’ We had a brand tool that we used and we exposed the brand to them. They saw the skeleton of the brand and we told them that what we needed to do was to add flesh to the skeleton. Less than one week after the pitch, we got our first business. It was fantastic. Another wonderful experience was when we had the opportunity to pitch for a business in Uganda, East Africa. We pitched against top-rated ad agencies in that country and it was a brief we got online. This was a presentation we had to first of all send prior to our going to Uganda, and we sent it online. Three days after we sent it, we were invited by the Board to come to Uganda. That was the first time I flew to Uganda. That was made possible by my mentor who is also the Executive Vice Chairman of IGI, Mr Remi Olowude. He is the Chairman of the company in East Africa. We made the presentation to the whole Board in East Africa. One week after, they notified us that we had won the business. This helped us to move to East Africa and we were able to open offices in Uganda and Rwanda. These two are some of the milestones in our ten years in the business. And they were very inspirational times for us. Do you still put everything you have into pitching for a business like you did for these two accounts? We have no option. If we want to continue to be in business in this industry, we must, at every time, attempt to give everything that we have. And we are very modest in the way we go about it. We encourage our clients and tell them that what we do is not about managing their brands but growing brands. And we believe that if we have encouragement from the clients, we will give the best we have in growing the brands and their businesses. It is by inspiration and by vision that we have the name 24-7 Communications because we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Your presence cuts across West and East Africa. Are there any similarities and differences in advertising in the countries you operate in? 24-7 Integrated Marketing Communications is a home-grown African brand with presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Rwanda. In West Africa, there are similarities. We have sat down in Lagos and developed creatives for Ghana market. Whatever you can run in Nigeria can be run in Ghana. And what you can run in Ghana can be run in Nigeria. But in East Africa, it is a different ball game. To operate effectively there, you must have very deep and sound local knowledge. The way we plan media in Uganda is very different. We also have different creatives – what they want to hear, what they want to see. And our commercials there are different. There are virtually all international agencies domiciled East Africa. When you run in East Africa, you are running against all the international agencies that are there locally. It is not like that in Nigeria or Ghana where you have home-grown agencies and partnerships with international agencies. So there’s a big and striking difference. That’s why, most of the times, during the course of business, I spend more time in East Africa than I do in Nigeria and Ghana. From your experience, what should an agency that wants to succeed in business in Nigeria do? Any agency that wants to succeed in this business must have a vision. And with the vision in mind, you will break the clutter. And you must not be too anxious. For every brand that you have, no matter the budget, you must make personal effort at ensuring you work towards success. Because the more the brand succeeds, the more your agency succeeds. You should have that in mind. And if you keep your head low, work painstakingly, I’m sure very soon success will come. There is the assumption in some marketing communication circles that advertising is dying. Is that correct? Advertising is not dying and will not die. However, the industry is moving from mono solution to 360 degree integrated marketing communications solutions. Advertising will continue to play its role till thy kingdom come. Advertising will continue to play a critical role in the mix of integrated marketing communications. The only thing is agencies must re-invent themselves to creating solutions for clients along integrated marketing communications. Sometimes we have agencies complaining that briefs are scanty or not explicit enough. How should an ideal brief be? I’m really not one of those people who complain that they don’t get detailed briefs. If a client doesn’t give you a rich brief, develop one with them. The truth of the matter is that we, at 24-7, have a brief template. It’s a question and answer thing. Once you answer the questions in the brief template, then you’ve answered all our queries. - See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/09/advertising-plays-crucial-role-marketing-communications-mix-omoba-adewale/#sthash.zOFEJTna.dpuf