Emeka Okeke is a consummate marketing Communications practitioner with a keen interest in changing the way brands are built and customer engagement, for effective communication planning across West and Central Africa. Thus far he has had an illustrious advertising career with specialization in cost-effective media, planning, deployment and management. In 2013 he resigned his appointment as the pioneer managing director of media perspectives after serving for 8 years and 8 months. In January 2014, he set up Media Fuse Limited. 17 months after, Emeka Okeke invited brand journalists to unfold with a flourish what promises to be Nigeria’s next biggest name in full media agency practice and specialist media services with the formal unveiling of Media Fuse Dentsu Aegis Network.
According to Okeke, Media Fuse Dentsu Aegis Network will leverage international network and partnerships in service areas such as integrated communication planning, digital media creatives and production; search and display ad optimization, social / community media management, media data planning and implementation, out -of-home strategy, planning and buying with Lagos as West African regional service hub covering Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Cote D’ Ivoire, Sierra-Leone, Gambia, Liberia via affiliates and partner agencies. Okeke throws more light on the new agency’s vision and strategic thrust. Excerpts:
Is Media Fuse Dentsu Aegis Network a Nigerian or international agency?
Media Fuse Limited and Dentsu Aegis Network have become integrated in Nigeria and parts of Africa. We have a strategic vision to become one of the critical drivers of convergent media by making the right investments to deliver compelling professional services in the Nigerian economy. Our 17-month old media agency has earned its recognition as a national agency by fulfilling all the requirements needed by APCON for the granting of a license to practice in Nigeria.
We were part of the people invited to the briefing of APCON Committee on Advertising Practice Reforms (ACAPR) because we are a critical stakeholder. ACAPR simply said that for an agency to qualify as a national agency, Nigerians must own 75 per cent of the equity. Anything above 25 per cent classifies that agency as a foreign agency. So, we used that opportunity, we attracted foreign investment. What they have is 25 percent, so we still enjoy our national agency license. In addition, I ask our direct competitors to provide me with evidence of their N200 million professional indemnity insurance that our generation of agencies had to provide to APCON to be licensed or provide evidence of a N200 million guarantee from a bank which are APCON requirements for licensing. We can’t go through this difficult licensing process and let the media and the industry down.
Give us your take on advertising in Nigeria today
My generation of advertising practitioners is the luckiest in the industry in the sense that the new generation does not have the privilege of working in the traditional full service advertising agency where media was a department and only few members of the department had the rare privilege to present their work to clients directly. Truth is that the media department in those days was treated as a poor cousin of the creative and client service departments. From that tradition and context, we are lucky because we were part of the group that launched the first media agencies in the market. We are lucky because today, we are still alive to see the drive into the digital age. And so, we have been part of the past, the present and the bridge into the future. And to that extent, my assessment is that the advertising industry is changing rapidly.
We moved from the past where the audience consumed only what the media gave to them, therefore independent content providers were not there. If they were there, they were not autonomous from the broadcast media ownership. They were basically employees of the broadcasters and channel owners. In those days the media owner produced his content and chose what he wanted you to watch. But we have witnessed the proliferation of content and the independence of content production meaning that the responsibility for content has been taken away from the broadcaster to specialists. Yet the specialists were giving us something similar to the broadcasters to some extent, except that they devoted more time to it but they were also feeding us with content that they felt that we needed.
So, based on what we are experiencing today, what do you think the future holds?
We are presently in a situation where consumers have choices; are interconnected and no longer have to sit in front of a television set to get content. We now have video on demand. We have TV commercials being deployed on YouTube, on Iroko TV and other VOD (video on demand) platforms; meaning that media agencies must develop new ways of measuring effectiveness. So, whereas our market is one in which some people still see us in the old model when we only engaged with the traditional media, the reality is that the metrics for measuring effectiveness in traditional media based on awareness, recall, share of voice and so on no longer speak to the business objectives and likely outcome of how this investment is driving sales, volumes, profitability, loyalty, referral actions etc. And that is what convergence media driven by different devices is doing for us today.
So the future is in convergence media. And as I have said before, we must recognise that the consumer journey is no more linear. The consumer is now extensively connected to multiple devices at any point in time; and what is driving that connectivity is technology. And the backbone that is driving that technology is mobile telephony and other portable devices with smart capabilities. And therefore, you can no longer say that a professional woman can only listen to radio in the morning on her way to work or that she can only read the newspapers when she is in the office or watch TV only between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. That notion is completely debunked today and that is why I say if those of us in the media consultancy business do not understand this fundamental shift, this radical shift in the way people consume media and in the way people consume content, we will go the way of the dinosaurs in no distant time.
In your opinion, are media independents well-positioned to take advantage of this new direction where the advertising world is heading?
Yes and no. No, in the sense that not too many agencies have the privilege that some agencies like Media Fuse Dentsu Aegis Network have had to attract global partners that are helping in our understanding of what is going on around us, therefore pushing us to wire up for these changes.
Expectations and anticipation of these changes is what is giving rise to new levels of partnerships in past affiliations. But the conversation today is about investment in the advertising industry. Different levels of discussions are going on in the boardrooms of global players about investment in Nigeria. Nobody comes to you anymore with affiliation proposals. They want to be part of the real thing. Name one network in the top five global division one league table that is not talking to somebody in Nigeria or even closing deals. Publicis, OMNICOM, WPP; name it. We are happy to be counted as key players in this league and renewed interest in Nigeria and our industry.
You cannot expect someone who has no investment in your business to go and spend millions or billions of dollars in R&D (research and development) on your behalf and hand it over to you all in the name of affiliation. You cannot expect him to be develop and sponsor professorial Chairs in Marketing Communication in renowned universities across the world and hand over the outcome of such investment to you just because you are an affiliate of his network in return fora percentage share of your commission on referred businesses. So we offered them 25 per cent and retained 75 per cent in line with the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for equity ownership in a licensed national agency. What has that done for us? What it has done for us is that there is a skill set that is being transferred; a skill set that is being unleashed in the market by that partnership that you cannot find in our university curriculum today and that is a boost for us.
How prepared are you for these changes?
We are very prepared. We are investing and we have laid the foundation or the structure needed to take on this development; which is why today we have Posterscope. Posterscope is the only out-of-home specialist media agency in this country and in the entire West Africa today. And how is Posterscope’s services different? You would know, because a lot of investment by advertisers in this market goes into out-of-home, which is the outdoor media, in a street sense. There is no science to the reason why they must invest the amount of money being invested in that medium as it stands today in Nigeria. There is no science behind why you must pay N60 million, for instance, on a flash up on an LED board anywhere in the country. So Posterscope has invested across the world in technology, in systems and in human capital to be able to make that change and make that difference in managing resources very well in terms of value delivery and accountability in the out –of-home medium.
They have about many products and services that were not in this market and we already have clients that are ready to test these services. Probably in the next two or three months, Posterscope will have a formal launch. That’s one.
Second is in the area of digital marketing services. We are leveraging the strong Dentsu Aegis Network’s global digital marketing and performance resources to bring compelling digital marketing support to our existing and prospective clients in Nigeria to support our desire to deliver an effective ecosystem planning in the market place.
Isobar is a digital strategy, creative and production agency that does not see its competitors to be only other digital marketing agencies but also sees full time creative agencies of this world as its competitors. Because Isobar is coming from the digital space and era, it would be able to create communications that are relevant to digital devices that have connected the consumers. For instance, if I tell a classical creative agency in this country to create a commercial that will be able to run on traditional television network as well as on VOD platforms for me, I am certain that they will struggle for too many reasons. And so, Isobar is able to access the technology and the resources and the system that enables them to create content for multiple platforms in a strategic manner that delivers on brand commerce.
How well are you doing with clients in the Nigerian market?
Our clients include Procter & Gamble. We service Procter & Gamble, not just in Nigeria, but across West and Central Africa. We service Friesland Campina Wamco, all brands and services. We have MasterCard International. We have New Age mobile devices, Microsoft Legacy, Microsoft Devices (formerly Nokia), and we have Phillips. We also have Total, Old Mutual, and we could go on and on.
Some of these accounts came through pitches that happened after Dentsu Aegis Network invested and, as their local partners, we were involved in the pitches. But if we did not represent the Nigerian side of the business well, we probably could not have won some of the pitches. Just like if you look at Dentsu Aegis Network in Africa, the only place Carat works for Procter and Gamble is in Nigeria and West Africa. So Dentsu Aegis Network provided access but if we didn’t have local competence, the business would not have transited to us.
We got our first client, Tradestable.com, from Sweden. It was purely a local pitch. It is not a client of Dentsu Aegis Network. We have New Age Devices; part of A &P Foods via one of our digital agency brands. We have MasterCard which was already pitched by Dentsu Aegis Network and handed to us in a global contract. So it’s a mixture of quite a few that we won locally and quite a few that we have opportunity to pitch alongside and show our competence in the local market and quite a few that came to us out of Dentsu Aegis Network because it’s a global giant anyway.
What is the vision for Media Fuse Dentsu Aegis Network?
Innovating the way brands are built. By innovating the way brands are built, we continue to prototype the future. We are driven by our core values of being agile, pioneering, ambitious, responsible and collaborative.
Thanks for your time; we wish you the best of luck…
Thank for the opportunity of your platform.
