Stakeholders urge businesses to brace up for more challenges

Stakeholders in the marketing profession have been urged by experts to prepare for a difficult time ahead in 2023.

This call was made at the just concluded The Industry Summit 4.0 with the theme: “how marketers should handle 2023″ recently in Lagos.

Speaking at the event, the chairman of the occasion who is also chairman of STB-McCann, Sir Steve Omojafor said the outcome of 2023 election petitions and national population census (NPC) will impact how Marketers will handle 2023 and subsequent years, noting that, how positively or negatively, remains a matter of conjecture.

The marketing expert further stated that, “what we do know, however, is that the Marketing Communication Industry in Nigeria, will not be immune from both local and global trends.”

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He said “the World Bank in its Global Economic Prospects (January 2023) makes it clear that the pronounced weaknesses of the United States, Europe and China, which are described as ‘the world’s three major engines of growth, would have ‘adverse spillovers for emerging markets and developing economies.’

According to him, “this is not hard to understand, I am not an Economist, but it is safe to say that marketers should expect a bumpy ride in 2023. In Nigeria, for instance, when you throw in a mish-mash of the country’s low crude production, weak exports, the dynamics of the workplace and importantly, a budget deficit of N11.34 trillion, derived from a projected total revenue of N10.49 trillion and total expenditure of N21.83 trillion, budgeted by the outgoing Buhari administration, it is easy to infer that the picture is far from rosy either for the country’s economy or, more strongly, for us in the Marketing Communication Industry.”

While presenting the first paper at the event entitled: “Turn Data to Action: How Marketers Can Rationalize & Drive Efficiencies with Intelligence”, keynote speaker, Tolu Ogunkoya, Regional Group Managing Director, OMD West and Central Africa {WeCA} who was represented by the Executive Director, mediaReach OMD, Yinka Adebayo pointed out that, ”some say, Data is Oxygen, Data is life but, for us, data is blood, adding that data is needed to address the gaps in today’s dynamic environment / everchanging landscape.”

According to him, “big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it, to sum it, business is about having foresight, agility, scale and tenacity.”

“We should learn never to waste a crisis situation because a crisis will always be the best platform for good managers to excel. Your ability to showcase your potential is when you are in a deep situation. If everything is going on normally everybody will thrive but when the whirlwind is putting everybody aside and one decides to put in the creative cap at the end of the day you see opportunity.” He noted.

Speaking further he said: “For example, during the lockdown, when everybody went to sleep some people made the money they have never made before. That is a crisis situation, but rather than see the cup half empty they saw it as half full”.