‘Some agencies are circumstantial’

PHd, one of line media companies of Omnicom Group berthed in Nigeria four years ago to deploy to leadership in the area media management. The MD of the company, Bayo Adisa told Daniel Obi recently in an interview that the presence of multiple Omnicom affiliate companies in Nigeria is more of the ability to service their existing global clients

Could you tell us about PHd media
It is second line Media Company of the Omnicom Group. One of the largest marketing communication groups in the world. In the media arm of the Omnicom holding company, we have OMD, PHd and Prometheus. The later is not a trading name that has arrived in Sub-Saharan Africa. PHd and OMD are very active in our market. PHd was founded in order to deploy top leadership in the area of media management. It is not meant to be a large firm, but in terms of output, quality of service and drive for excellence it does not only satisfy the client but ensuring that the client is delighted. Our PHd started business in Nigeria 4 years ago. It has been a good adventure for us.

Is it an acronym, what is the full meaning of PHd
PHd is a trade mark name. It is just the way it is. It is like OMD.

Four years of business in Nigeria, how has it been?
It has been a wonderful journey. The peculiarity of the PHd is interesting if you look at business that started from ground zero. From zero it has grown to become a success story. We thank God and grateful to those who believe in the leadership of the company. We live in the existence of our clients. For the first 4 months there was no business but today we boast of several clients whom provide quality service to. My pedigree and performance from MediaCom, my last place of work as director of business development and the goodwill I was able to build in the industry translated to benefits that enabled us to serve as launching pad for PHd.
When you mention top leadership as a business model, what do you mean?
Every business must have a vision. Wherever you play you must be able to define a niche for yourself. That is why in our business some people strength lies in buying media, and as such they can generate deals and package deals for you. Some others are strong in research or planning. For us, the strength of PHd is in strategic media planning. Talking of top leadership entails that whatever it is that you are doing, you are adapting global best practices, to ensure that in your market, the way you play you are going for the leadership position. Our kind of business and our business offering as media agencies is becoming generic. But what counts for the difference is the quality of efficiency that you put into what you are doing, your drive for efficiency and ability to think outside the box. We have been able to demonstrate this effectively especially if you look at the flagship campaigns we have ran for our clients like Lacasera, Overtine among others.

There appears to be more media agencies servicing a few Ad spenders, what do you think?
When you look that it, the real media spenders are very few. Some of these agencies are circumstantial agencies. They are agencies that were brought to live on account of some compelling situation and circumstances. When you see media buying practitioner who is a friend to a high placed manager, the next thing is to form an agency. When you look at some of these agencies, they have one or two clients and that is what they are sitting on. But you cannot have an international player like PHd and you say that is how you want to operate in our environment.

Media buying success is measured in terms of cost efficiency, how then do you ensure effectiveness of planning that will deliver the required audience by the client to generate call to action that will impact on client business?
Increasingly, clients are becoming more discerning. They are looking at the whole idea of having a media agency that goes beyond budget efficiency. The ability to stretch the budget, get discounts, get rebate and concession that will enable the client budget to deliver more in value, that is what we call budget efficiency. It is not just enough that the client has put N5m down and you are able to deliver N6m worth of media. It is this how this N5m has impacted on the business itself. If I sell products, what chunk in my sales figure can I readily record on account of my advertising. And all of this will come back to you as agency because you have to profile the clients target audience. By profiling, means the ability to define their psychographics and demographics. At every point in time where can you engage them. All these are what is very important and the understanding of all these will determine the effectiveness of your planning. When you have effective planning and you are able to match it with budget efficiency, then you are a star to your client. It is much more important that the long term benefit of the success of the client business is paramount in the media. That is where you have the media planning and strategy which is based on research and scientific knowledge of the understanding of the target audience.

2015 is around the corner, what should your clients be expecting from you?
The business we are in is an ever evolving business. You cannot rest on your performance of last year. You have to be constantly thinking the next thing. On our part we have been able to take compliance and control to another level. Our clients attest to this. We have been able to develop mechanism that is bullish in ensuring that our partners comply with set rules and conditions of our terms of engaging them. Performance of the agency oftentimes will be based on the quality of the control in ensuring compliance.

What is the philosophy of a global organization like Omnicom having so many affiliates in an economy, what is the advantage to the economy they are operating in?
It is an area we can streamline to FDI. When they come they want to look at the economy to find out the best way they can maximize the opportunities. Firstly, their presence in this kind of economy goes beyond profiteering. It is more of the ability to service their existing global clients. Those multinational organizations deal with credible organizations. That is what we call reputational benefits. That automatically translates to benefits to local affiliates. That is what gives rise to account movements.

Could you assess the outgoing year and give us your projections for 2015 in the face of vagaries in the system?
The outgoing year has been a basket of the good and the bad. If you look at our industry that is doing so well, may not be able to tell the same story. What has dominated our environment in the closing year has been that good number of clients is slashing their budgets. But the good news is that as all these are happening, we have new entrants, new businesses coming in. There are new people that are settling down in our environment and are wanting to do things that will bring them to limelight to the discerning consumer. Projections into 2015, the thinking was that from the last quarter of the year, there will be a lot of noise from political activity. But how much of political ads did we record.
The elections are coming up in few weeks but the ads are not there. The political campaigns are not really materializing, so we have to look inwards. In another arm is to look at the global phenomenon of the slide in oil price. All of these will impact on marketing. We are worst hit as we did not prepare for it. 2015 will not be as juicy as we expected to be but discerning media agencies and marketing communication practitioners need to think inwards. Any client you want to service you should bring value to the table for him.