WE HAVE GREAT LEADERSHIP IN ADVERTISING INDUSTRY NOW

Abraham
Mr Charles Abraham is the Group Managing Director (CEO) of LTC-JWT, an advertising and marketing communications outfit. Abraham has well over 25 years experience in the advertising and marketing communications industry, both in Nigeria and abroad. The company, which manages major accounts such as GT Bank, Nokia, FIRS also has such other subsidiary outfits as Prism, MSM, Youth Dynamix and CMC Connect.

In this interview, Abraham chronicles the past and future of advertising in the country, proffering solutions to the myriad of problems bedeviling a sector so 'dear' to his heart.

Excerpts.
I started with Grant Advertising in 1983 as a youth corper, having been retained by the company. I subsequently rose to the position of a Senior Executive. Afterwards, we decided to start LTC Advertising. I was a pioneer member of LTC Advertising. Though as a junior executive, I mooted the idea of starting the agency.

Our senior partner was Lawson.
We also had Mr Thomas. I headed the Client Service Department of LTC Advertising when we started, and I served in that position up till 1991. I later took time out abroad furthering my education and also worked as the Head of Publicity, Marketing and Design of London Borough of Onslow. I later became a pastor. And by 2003, I was back in the country to join this same company - LTC Advertising - again. But at that time, I was working at the group as an Executive Director. By 2009, I was appointed the Group Managing Director of LTC-JWT Advertising.

State of marketing communications industry in Nigeria

My feeling about the industry is very mixed. In some areas, I can say that there have been some level of improvements, while in others, there have been stagnation and retardation. I believe that somehow something happened, but I cannot tell when it did. I feel like most people in this industry took their eyes off the ball a bit and we stopped developing it, thereby becoming more of business people and, because of that, standard dropped. I can tell you that when I returned, I did not feel the standards had improved. In some areas, I can see that there is more sophistication. But I think generally there is the need for a lot of grounds to the clients and marketing companies.

We had a lot of advertising professionals. I know they listened to us a lot. But when I came back, I noticed that we were on the back pedal and, right from then, I started asking questions on what happened. And it's like, professionally, some people just don't concentrate more on those things anymore. Those values had dropped.

But, right now, I can see that there is a lot of leadership in the industry now that is actually pushing those professional things again. And I can see that we are beginning to gain a lot of respect again. One obvious aspect is the area of not strengthening the strategic aspect of the business.

Essentially, advertising professionals are known for their original thinking, alongside the ability to dissect a brand's property and come up with proposals that can move the brand forward.

I think we just started thinking of how to make money and, in the process, some key aspects of the things that needed to be done right from the conceptualization stage became compromised.

Also, in the area of client services, I noticed that the kind of people who were in that department were different. They were not as rounded as they were before. Their insight into the brand and the consumer was limited.

Again, in the area of media, we did so many innovations. And somehow it just seems there was stagnation in that area. I may sound critical but we have to be honest because if we are not honest, and brutally too, we won't change.

Nexus between marketing communications and economic development

There had been major improvements in the life of people because of marketing communications. It may not be the best practice I can think of but lifestyle has changed. The consumer in Nigeria has a lot more information to take decisions. And that is as a result of the efforts of marketing communication companies. Media has also evolved. People are more sophisticated as to the choice of what they do, how they do it and even where to place their adverts.

So, I can see that there is a lot more knowledge out there about products and services. I am not sure the Nigerian consumer is actually enthroned as king at the moment but I believe that with more education and communication, these things are going to get there because that's really when marketing gets very exciting…and that is when the consumer is actually enthroned as king. where they take decisions strongly without coercion. Right now in some areas, competition is not that really what it should be.

Let's take telecommunications for instance, because that's a big area.

Not until Airtel came and drive everybody in another direction, we thought it was impossible to get some of the things we are getting now because we relied on other service providers. All they said then was that it was not possible. And now, we have suddenly seen that it is possible.

And I will tell you there is a fundamental issue with me as a person. Why would MTN wait for Airtel before they reduce tariffs and other prices of the services they offer; and why would they equally wait for them to come out with a campaign to that effect before they do theirs?

I believe that if someone somewhere is doing his job right and is really on the ball about marketing, that is an angle that ought to have been blocked so that MTN would have to go back and re-think their strategy. But they waited first, before reacting. But that to me is belated because somebody has already taken the lead.

Level of regulation in Advertising industry
At the moment, I can tell you that I am very happy with the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, which is the regulatory body in the advertising industry.

APCON has been very proactive, engaging government at the right level. And they equally got stakeholders involved in many strategic things. For example, Nigeria started its rebranding exercise without involving the advertising agencies, the people that are supposed to do it. APCON got together and said, should we write a stinker to the then Minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili, or should we engage the minister and tell her that we could help her? We took the approach to engage the minister and tell her that we could help her.

So, we wrote a collective letter as head of agencies to the minister and the minister was humble enough to admit that she forgot a key stakeholder in the process and came back to us to advise her on the logo aspect of the re-branding process which was yet to be developed then.

So, they threw the logo aspect open to all agencies and to the glory of God, LTC-JWT came out with the best logo designed for the competition. Going forward, some of the policy changes and issues that APCON is dealing with now have been very impressive.

They are equally setting up training to raise the bar in the industry. I really believe so much in all the reforms going on in APCON at the moment and I am very ready to spare my time for any APCON activity whenever I am called upon to do so.

Operations of LASAA on outdoor advertisements
On the aspect of Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency, I think government agencies should understand their role correctly. LASAA is supposed to be a regulator and not a competitor. However, the unique situation that happened in the context was that, the person that was brought on board to run LASAA had an understanding of the industry alongside a vested interest in that business, so he used the platform to generate income for Lagos State. However, he overstepped what his role should have been and that is my own honest assessment about it.

I think Lagos State has realized that and I think they are doing things to address the situation.

Going forward, let regulators be regulators and operators be operators. Otherwise there would be a conflict of interest and I think that was the case in LASAA.

Curbing false claims in advertising
I don't have all the records because I am not on the sub-committee of APCON that is dealing with such problems. However, I know that they have been reprimanding and penalizing some agencies and companies for doing the wrong thing.

I also know that APCON has the authority from the government to impose sanction and I am sure that they are not afraid to use that power now. At the moment, I can authoritatively tell you that we have to take every single advert to APCON now for approval before it is published. And if you make a claim that is ambiguous or is discovered to be a bogus claim, such advert will not be accepted.

Advertising in Nigeria is becoming very regulated. Not only do we have to go to APCON, we have to go to the National Agency for Food, Drugs, Administration and Control and sometimes industry sub-sectors. Though,I believe that there is still room for improvement.

Huge advertising debts
I don't think that advertising agencies would want to deliberately deny media houses their rightful income. But we are caught up in a vicious cycle because in most cases, clients extend their credit period given to them beyond the approved limit. So, I want to say moving forward, there is a need to sit down and have an inter-sectoral group that agrees that clients should be given - say 45 days and media to agency 45 - 90 days. And we all would be held accountable to the agreement.

Though, I know that APCON is doing something along this line, still, I cannot deny that there have been some issues in the past. As far back as I have been in this industry, there has always been this issue.

I remember in the days of Grant Advertising, we used to go round all the media houses reconciling and sometimes we could not even find the invoice to justify some of these claims by the media houses.

To move forward and to develop the business, all of us need to come together and have an agreement and then have a regulatory body to deal with defaulters on both sides. Truly speaking, we do have some bad players on the client's side too and this affects our ability to service some of our debts with the media houses. But above all, there is really need for understanding on all sides. I will not try and run away from the issue because these are some of the things that we are even tackling as a company. We want to be above board in that area.

Besides, we want to make sure that we are ahead of the game in that regard by settling our bills on time

Preparedness for global revolution in digital communication LTC-JWT is now 25 years old and by now, if we don't know what we are doing, we should be out of the business. I am aware of the global revolution in digital communication, and as a result of that, about 18 months ago, we set up our own digital unit in the company. We have a digital unit that is doing things on the mobile platform. Not just mobile but on the Internet and anything that has to do with devices.

We are one of the first companies to explore augmented reality, use of holograms and all the things that have to do with digital devices. We have equally deliberately altered the age profile of our company, so that we can bring in digital generation into our company. So, right now, we have a lot of young professionals who are really savvy at these things. Again, we are currently monitoring every development that has to do with the mobile platform.

And we are equally proposing to many clients in that regard.

Though, the honest truth is that; there is still little that we can achieve on the mobile platform right now in Nigeria. And because of that, we are not seeing the explosion at the moment. But in a year or two, the explosion would become visible. Right now, whatever is being done in that regard is just laying the foundation alongside investments. We are not going to make a lot of money from it at the moment, but we will make a lot of money from it in 18 to 24 months time.

As a way of building capacity in that regard, what we did towards the end of 2008 to 2009 was for us to talk to some digital communications service providers abroad. We signed agreement with an AR company, digital signage company and also a working agreement with a hologram company. That in itself is a level of investment. Right now, we are taking a view that digital must not just be a unit but must be a mindset.

So, right now, what we are trying to do is to encourage everybody in our organization to actually go digital. Even though we have a champion and a group of people that are driving it, we want everybody to be part of it because we are investing time, energy and money.

Role of Advertising in Vision 20-2020
This is a contemporary question for us in this company because we just presented a proposal to the vision 20:2020 team on how to drive the vision forward. We are fully convinced that we have an inestimable role to play in propagating the vision in the country.

A vision that is not broadcast or publicized is not just known to anyone. We are part of a consortium of people that have come together to help drive the vision forward. And we are very involved.

The fundamental thing is that; without a vision, we are never going to go where we need to go. We have been talking about this vision 20:2020, but do people understand it? Can we articulate it? Can the man on the street understand it? That is what we believe our role is. Our role is to put the vision on everybody's lips including the children. And until that vision is on everybody's heart, it's still a waste of time because the government is not going to bring the vision to pass, the people have to bring the vision to pass. But they are the initiators and we are the implementers.

Activities at Prism
Prism is an activation company. And we are also into intelligence activation. Talking about intelligence activation, what we mean by that is; thinking out of the box. And in thinking out of the box, we want to do things the way it has never been done before. How are we going to do that? We are not going to wait for the clients to come up with a brief and tell us this is the way he wants to drive his brand. What we are doing basically is to get our team of consummate professionals together and come up with creative ideas. This is what the consumers want to see and hear. And how do we communicate this to them? We need to go directly to the consumers. And as we all know, the marketing budget for above the line is dwindling and there is a huge budget coming down to below the line activities. And what this means is that operators in this area of business need to brace up for the challenges.

Even on the global arena, everything is turning towards activation. And that is going to go for direct consumer marketing. And in doing that, what we need to do is to get down to the consumers, even consumers in rural areas. Not just consumers in the semi and urban areas because you find out that the target audience for most brands are in the semi-urban and the urban areas. Now it's not just the semi-urban and urban areas, you are talking about the rural areas.

Again, talking about vision 20-2020, it is something we believe so much about in this group. And in doing that, we don't want just the elite to know about it. We want the mechanics on the roadside and market men and women including children to know about it. And they can as well tell other people, like the children, literates and the illiterates about it because everybody needs to know about it. We need to drive that process by going down to the roots and making sure the brand is available to everybody rather than just a selected few in the country.

Manpower in Advertising
You will agree with me that it is the caliber of people that you have on board a business that determines the output. For us in LTC-JWT, we have a benchmark. And we have an international standard. When we are bringing in people, we are bringing in their skills, knowledge, ability and attitude. We have our core values. And we make sure that the people we bring in conform to our core values.

Definitely, when you bring in people at that level, their output will reflect who the people are. But when agencies are looking for people anyhow and at all cost without proper screening, what they get from them is garbage in garbage out.

So, for us we are conscious of this fact and we make sure that the people we bring on board our business are first class people with integrity and values who can contribute not just their skill, but know that skill will transform and change the society for better even in the area of marketing communications.