Between 2020 and 2021, marketing communication industry in Nigeria faced tough business challenges exacerbated by difficult economic environment and Covid- 19 pandemic. In this interview, Akonte Ekine, the CEO of Absolute PR, looks at the future. He speaks on other issues including tech industry’s push for consumer share of mind. Daniel Obi reports.
How would you assess marketing communication industry in 2021? Do you see some changes in 2022?
The year 2021 is our year of return to some level of normalcy across sectors. It is the year of the impact of Covid 19. The full realization of Covid on us all as the pandemic was first a shock and then we absolved it and adapted to it with new learnings and significant change in behaviour socially and economically.
Oh yes, there will be more changes in 2022 in line with the new normal and the entire world’s direction on managing Covid as you can see that even in this year, we have started having events hybrid which is almost a norm just one year after the lockdown. There will be more changes as we all adapt to the reality of the situation.
Technology and analytics are redefining business, how can PR leverage them to offer the best services to their clients?
It is the way to go, business intelligence, insights can only enable us to develop appropriate plans and messages. Historically a good PR campaign starts with research and what technology is doing to PR now is to bring it to the fore of the practice.
PR is leveraging technology every passing second using it to gather data, analyse the data and predict consequences. How PR leverages technology is to engage technology to the fullest. Explore all available tools that will enhance efficient service delivery.
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Your firm, Absolute PR is enjoying steady growth, could you recall to us how the firm started and where it is today?
Thanks, we are young and nimble. Our focus is to work for clients with value. In the last eleven years of existence, we can only but be grateful to God for allowing us the privilege of working with reputable brands across the economy. These clients, our partners have been very wonderful and understanding. It has been a journey of togetherness for the good of the brands we are associated with.
Where are we today? I think our clients, local and international are in the best position to say where we are in terms of service offering. We have clients giving us independent awards of recognition and satisfaction of service offering and that to me is a statement of where we will always like to be, where the client will say, “Absolute PR you have done well please take this letter or plaque as our token of appreciation of your service”. We got it from a Client in Insurance, in Technology and in Entertainment on three different occasions and different sectors, that to us is the best reward for service. Once we get that smile from our client then we are where we like to be.
Absolute PR is a young firm, but it is emerging strongly in the market, what are the pillars of strength for the organisation?
We are a business with a conscience, we care about people first and foremost and our understanding is that Public Relations is about people, so we are doing our best to be people friendly in our approach to our service offering to the extent that our battle cry is that once a person is positively affected by our action we are almost at that beautiful spot of satisfaction.
Our biggest pillar is understanding people, we are doing our best to avoid a reputational crisis that is all over the place in terms of issues affecting things in the country and we take it one second at a time in building our trust, love and friendship with all our stakeholders.
Absolute PR is today transforming telecom organisations through PR strategies, what is the difference in handling firms in other sectors?
It is not news that Telecoms is the next big thing and fortunately we have always been around with our expertise first as integrated practitioners of
Marketing communications with a special interest in Reputation Management. So, it is about the people and the interest of the business. Like FMCG, like telecoms, it is about the aspiration of the brands and the owners of the brands. Once upon a time, the FMCGs were really on fire in the battle for the mind and share of voice. Even though the battle is still on, the willing fighters in consumer engagement in modern marketing conversations seems to be the tech people which could be due to the stage of the industry. If you ask me, the tech business is still at the introductory stage in the lifecycle and thus players in the sector are probably more fired to act aggressively than the FMCGs that seem to have a feeling of maturity and less dynamic in action to win in the share of mind, and even pocket. The telecoms are new citizens in the marketing communications world and they are talking to about three different generations trying to adopt new tech culture and behaviour while the FMCGs are almost saying people should know us rather than cultivate the new consumers. So, the behaviour of the owners of the brand contributes greatly to some of our strategies and actions. It is very simple; the clients’ mindset differs against the age of the brand and the industry.
Covid 19 exacerbated the troubles for the Marketing communication industry, how did Absolute PR struggle through this rough water and what are the lessons going forward?
I think you should be saying humanity and not just marketing communications. And if we agree that it is humans that got challenged, then we should look at the entire picture of how we all got into a state of shock and then seems to have a semblance of recovery with the instructions and guidance of how to keep safe and eventually got into new normal. We are as challenged as everyone and we are going through it one second at a time with our partners and associates.
It is a completely new understanding and approach to delivering values. Fortunately, somewhere in our profile we have said we will use both conventional and unconventional methods to deliver that one result for the client. So, what we have been doing is bend inside out or backward for the value needed by the clients and our stakeholders
What is your vision for the industry post Covid era?
I think it is more of a collective vision that we practitioners should have, but I will hope that there is improvement in the value of the business and the acceptance of the service.
Nigeria has not been able to leverage communication to sell itself to the outside world for investment and tourism, what is your take on this?
There are different kinds of selling and if we want to sell Nigeria, we should understand what we are selling and who we are selling to. This is a challenge, however at every point of the action of the country we are unconsciously making sales pitches to the known and unknown audience.
So, we are a nation with reputational crisis and in a state of reputational crisis as what we do and what we say are conflicting, so also the actions of officials are contradicting expectations of the public(citizens) and thus there is confusion in the space on how to behave and what or who to trust which allows us to have distorted perception about the country thus the public are left to pick the line of perception that seems to connect with them at various level. So, who is selling what to who as a nation when you watch the local news or your experience in the street?
To you, how can Nigerian PR industry be shaped to do better for clients?
We cannot isolate PR in the improvement of an industry, I think we are a part of a national conversation on how the country can be better. We need to return to some fundamentals in society. The first point is, are we behaving as expected among the committee of nations. Once we start looking at ourselves as humans and treating each other with respect, the entire nation will drawback to what should be close to the ideal.
