Lanre Adisa is the Group CEO /Chief Creative Officer of Noah’s Ark Group, a creative agency that has won many awards and the recent being Agency of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year at the prestigious 2020 Pitcher’s Award held in Lagos. In this interview, he spoke on a number of issues including the impact of Covid-19 and how media agencies will navigate the times. He simply said Covid-19 has hit the marketing communication industry badly. Excerpts;
The rampaging COVID- 19 pandemic has laid prostrate a number of businesses while many organisations and institutions have been adversely affected. How has Noah’s Ark been coping?
No one foresaw anything of this nature or magnitude coming into 2020. When the sense of what was about to unravel finally hit us, we had to make plans to ensure we could continue providing services to our clients while keeping our people safe. As a matter of fact, we ran a survey and published a study on the impact of COVID-19 on businesses in Nigeria. Fortunately, we had the requisite infrastructure for remote working, even though we never envisaged using it at this scale across our Group. It was a little discomforting at the beginning, but in no time we all got used to the new life- our clients and our team. Beyond work, we’ve also been able to move some of our social engagements online to fill the void social distancing may have created. So far, we are making the most of it.
When other agencies are struggling amidst the crisis, your agency was crowned Agency of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year at the prestigious 2020 Pitcher’s Award held in Lagos, what does this feat tell about your agency?
The truth is, even in the face of war, because that’s the impact of the pandemic on the world as we used to know it, life must go on. Consumers will still have demands that clients will need to fulfil and that will call for the clients to seek out the best partners to help them maximise their lean resources. As regards the Pitcher Awards, I really would like to commend the courage of the organisers. They had the choice of cancelling the festival, but they pushed on to give voice to creativity. And that is a very strong message. This is the time that we need to celebrate creativity. The world needs creativity now more than any other time. We are very delighted about the wins. It further validates our brand essence. The significance of this win is the fact that this was not just a local win. It had entries from across the continent- from Senegal to Kenya, to South Africa among many more. In other words, this is Digital Agency and Advertising Agency of the Year for Africa as judged by the Pitcher Awards. That is in line with our vision of being in the league of the most successful brand builders out of Africa.
What other awards have you won in the past?
In terms of highlights, it’s on record that we won Nigeria’s first gold statuette at an international ad festival (that was the African Cristals) in 2016. We also won two national diplomas at the Cannes Lions Festival in 2013. That was the closest to Nigeria winning a Cannes Lion. We emerged African Agency of the Year at the African Cristals in 2018. We were top of the table with Grand Prix awards at the LAIF (Lagos Advertising & Ideas Festival) Awards in 2015 and 2017. We were also Agency of the Year at last year’s Pitcher Awards.
Would you, therefore, say that Nigerian agencies are inching closer to major Cannes awards?
One can say that, if you look at the international footprints of Nigerian agencies and creative leaders who have been enjoying recognition as members of juries of international ad festivals of late, including the Cannes Lions. Like I said earlier, we were the first to win the Cannes national diploma (merit award) for work we did for Indomie. Nigerian agencies have been winning international awards on the continent and beyond. From that point of view, it’s safe to say that we are not so far from achieving that feat as an industry. We just have to keep pushing and knocking on that door.
Perhaps, in addition to LAIF Awards, what other factors would you attribute to some feats achieved by some Nigerian agencies in the past?
For starters, it is commendable that we have been able to keep LAIF Awards going for almost fifteen years. It has engendered a new spirit of competition and interest in the local industry. The other good thing about the industry today is the fact that this new generation is lucky when it comes to knowledge. The world is a smaller place than ever. A few of our young people have been privileged to attend some of the best ad schools in the world. On the local front, they have also been able to break into the industry after taking programmes in the few available ad schools. The emergence of Digital has also changed a whole lot of things. So today, our industry is a lot more world-conscious than ever. And that to me is a good development as regards what we have accomplished and where we are headed.
To what level and degree would you say the COVID- 19 affected Nigeria’s marketing communications business?
I do not have the statistics, but I am very sure COVID-19 has hit our industry badly. We do not operate in isolation of the macro economy both globally and locally. As economies slide back into recession, the first reaction of most brands is to cut down advertising. A time like this calls for the reordering of priorities even for brands but it doesn’t call for brands to break the conversation with their consumers or slow it down budgets. A study by the IPA in the UK shows that brands that continue to communicate during a crisis perform eight times better than those who don’t. As we speak, all of us are having to deal with the consequences of COVID-19 in the best way we can.
What advice, therefore, do you have for the industry on how to cope with the challenges of this peculiar time of COVID- 19?
It is important that at a time like this we show enough empathy and responsiveness to our clients and teams. Like I said earlier, clients will be looking for the best partners to help them navigate these rough times. The onus is on each agency to prove that they have what it takes. Agencies may also want to start looking for opportunities to pivot into new territories that can take advantage of untapped skills and capabilities within their teams. Being able to keep and motivate the team is very important now that almost everyone is working from home.
The notion of the “New Normal” means a lot of things have to change vis-à-vis how they are being done previously, what are some of the changes you envisage in the marketing communications industry?
Yes, today it’s all about the “New Normal”. Essentially, what we have experienced is the emergence of a new way of working that perhaps would have taken three to four years to happen being forced on us in two to three weeks. Even when the pandemic recedes, I don’t see things going completely back to how they used to be. The pandemic has taught us some good lessons in working with more flexibility. In the world that will emerge after this era, location will not be an issue as far as talent is concerned. We should prepare for a lot of disruption as regards business models in our industry.
It has also brought about an avalanche of online knowledge sharing on various video conferencing platforms. The world has adjusted so fast. AAAN just concluded its 47th AGM and congress online and also elected a new Exco to boot- all online. This is the new way. Some of these new realities will not leave with COVID-19.
Are you comfortable with the way Nigerian people and government are handling COVID- 19 issues?
Overall, things have not been as terrible as it’s been projected in some quarters. I think some government agencies have been exemplary and some states have risen to the occasion. However, we could have done much better on the whole. We should have closed our borders earlier than we did. I also think government could have done better with sensitization. The biggest issue we have today is the lackadaisical attitude of the man on the street as regards COVID-19. In some states, when you wear a face mask, they will mark you out as a visitor, because people are so cynical about the reality of this virus. This is where government needs our industry, but I’m not sure how much of our involvement has been sought.
What advice would like to share with the government in moving the nation forward in this critical period in our national development?
Nations that have done well in managing COVID-19 achieved that through empathetic leadership. For a long time at the beginning of this pandemic, we didn’t have a good sense of leadership being in full control of things unlike what was obtainable in other countries, even some of our African sister countries. In New Zealand for instance, the Prime Minister at some point was on a live Facebook Q & A in her nightwear after putting her baby to bed. All of these actions help people believe that we are in this together. But then it’s never too late. People generally feel like they have bigger problems than COVID-19; problems like hunger. So they don’t really care. Government owes it a duty to come up with initiatives that will strive to solve some of those pecuniary problems with more transparency while also sensitizing people on the dangers inherent in our attitude to COVID-19. One key function of government is to build and sustain people’s hope in the nation today and tomorrow. We need that now, not just in talk, but through meaningful action.
