Folusho Phillips, chairman of Phillips Consulting Limited, has called on Public Relations practitioners to embrace innovation in order to stay relevant in the industry.
Speaking in Lagos at the 2nd edition of the Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) breakfast meeting, tagged, ‘The Business of Consulting,’ and how consulting firms and clients can win in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) economy, Phillips said consultants need to be aware of their role as role models.
According to him, consultants should be rendering tangible services, building institutions, and also innovating as there is a huge paradigm shift taking place every day.
He said PR practitioners needed to deploy cutting-edge tools and embrace best global practices in their service offerings because world events change at the speed of light, adding that innovation is the next step for customers’ convenience.
The lecture, designed to enable PRCAN members plan for economic headwinds and anticipate inherent opportunities in the Nigerian economy, saw a number of industry practitioners in attendance.
Israel Jaiye Opayemi, president of PRCAN, said that consultants needed to stay ahead of the curve and be ahead of their clients across the industries that they serve.
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He said that practitioners can only achieve this by investing more in research and acquiring data across sectors to be well-informed and equipped to deliver rich value to clients.
“When you look at the growth rate of the service industry and its contribution to the GDP of Nigeria over the last two years, the service industry has been doing great. Public relations and communication consultants are significant players in service growth. We do not want to be the catalyst that changes things but that does not change itself; we want to see evidence of the growth in our businesses,” he said.
Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, president of the African Public Relations Association (APRA), said that going with the trend is the strategy in itself to help PR practitioners to be relevant in the industry.
He, therefore, encouraged practitioners to run their businesses as perception consultants.
The Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) is the association of Public Relations Consultancy firms in Nigeria. PRCAN is legally chartered by a By-Law No. 3, 1993 of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), to cater to the interests of the consultancy side of PR practice in Nigeria. It currently has a membership of over 60 firms that provide services across at least 21 PR practice areas.
