Julius Agenmonmen is the Managing Director / CEO of BRANDLIFE, a Lagos based Pan African integrated marketing services company. The firm engages in the delivery of top class experiential and activation marketing services to several multinational and leading manufacturers of quality brands. The BRANDLIFE organization which commenced business operations in Nigeria about twelve years ago has since grown in lips and bound, having its network of branch opeartions spread across several countries including Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia in East Africa and Ghnana in West Africa. In this exclusive interview, the agency’s chief executive takes a critical examination of the current state of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) industry, highlighting the challenges and prospects of growth of the industry in Nigeria and across Africa. For him, the bane of development in the marketing sub-sectors revolves around clients attitude of appropriating the value chain of business. He spoke with New Narrative’s Business Editor, Clifford Amuzuo on several scintillating marketing and business related issues. Excerpts.
The reader would want to know, who is BRANDLIFE. What philosophical ideas informed birth of the agency.
Thank you, Brand Life is essentially a marketing services agency that we started way back to about 11 years ago, 2008 to be precise. Its main focus essentially is to provide marketing services in the areas of brand activation, field marketing services, digital marketing and channel management. Leaving my previous company which of course is Unilever, I came up with certain skills and experiences which I thought I should deploy to a business, that I would be able to add value given my experiences working for Unilever for quite a bit of time. Our determination was that, we should be able to offer our clients value in terms of return on investments, and that will be very key. So, no matter what, whether it’s experiential marketing or channel management, whatever activity, the client by the end of the day should have a clear return on investments. So, that was the motivating force. I wanted to be able to add value to the marketing industry having played for a very long time in that area, and so, setting up BRANDLIFE was informed by that, to add value. Of course, doing all of that, you make money and all of that, but essentially, that was why we set up BRANDLIFE, to add value, and today we say we are really delivering experiences that make life easy for our clients, and more enjoyable for consumers in Africa because that’s necessarily what it is, making life easier for our clients. So, clients can easily call us to say, we want you to do this, do that, we declare objectives so they don’t have to border themselves. We do it and make life easier for them, and of course, life more enjoyable for consumers in Africa because at the end of the day, we are talking of brands, we are talking of consumers and how to reach these consumers with these brands, inform them about these brands, bringing the brands in close proximity to the consumers, letting the brands interact with the consumers. That’s essentially what we do through different vehicles.
A lot of agency people would talk about similar things as you have done. What is that competitive edge, that strategic positioning that differentiates your agency from the lot?
I think that’s for me a very good question. How do we stand out from competition. First and foremost, I think my pedigree is very important. I haven’t just come from nowhere. I’ve come from a background of marketing and sales, a background where our ROI (Return on Investments) was always very clear. Every day, every week, every month, you are talking of results. So, today when I get a brief from a client, I put myself in their position, what exactly do they want to achieve, and my team, everybody actually have that DNA right now. I wanted to see a brief not really from their perspective. What exactly is the client asking for. Yes he wants to create experiences, yes he wants to activate, but what is in it for him. Is it just the purse, is it just the noise. By the end of the day the client is interested in a return on investment, how can I justify the 1 million, the 10 million, the 100 million that I have spent in terms of returns, in terms of sales, in terms of awareness. So that is at the bottom of how our clients view us, why we have been successful and what stands us apart. Secondly is that, even as we get bigger as an organization, we are also still nimble compared to many of the agencies, and so that allows us a lot of flexibility to be able to respond to our clients as speedily, quickly and deliver even at short notices. That is very important. We are not just a local company any more, we operate beyond this market. So we are able to pool experiences from the different markets we are operating from East Africa and now also in Angola and of course in West Africa, we are in Ghana. In East Africa, besides Kenya, we are operating in Uganda, we are in Ethiopia doing different executions for our clients. We are able to harness experiences from all of these places to the benefit of our clients because there are always best practices everywhere. When something has worked wonderfully in one market, you may discover that when you put it in another market, you may get better results or improved results than what you are used to in such market, and I think also we have a very wonderful team, a team of young men and women who are ready to excel, who are ready to give their best to the clients that we serve.
It won’t be wrong describing you as key player in African market. What would be your general assessment of Africa’s market talking about the IMC in Nigeria, West Africa and indeed the continent as a whole?
Well, it’s an interesting time to be. Increasingly, the dynamics are changing. Five years ago, it is not the way that it was played that it is been played now. I mean, one thing that has happened is that clients have realized that things have changed, and so agencies also need to change in the way they do things. Increasingly, social or digital communications is having a big part in all that we are doing. Whether you are doing activation or events or whatever, there is a digital element to it. How do you quickly connect with your consumer. So unlike before where you have an event today, you are waiting for the press men to report two days later with pictures on the cover of the newspaper. But today you are doing an event it is been reported all around the world, people are seeing what you are doing live and direct, so that is a major change. Secondly, the fact that consumers or rather, our clients companies recognize that there needs to be a shift from giving much of their budget to just above the line advertising, what the clients traditionally refer to as TV, Radio, Newspaper. There is a major shift. The shift is towards activation, to experiential, to Story Telling in which you are able to quickly assess the effectiveness because the Return on Investment is tangible. How many cases, how many units of the products were you able to sell after the activation. You are measured by that. You can’t do that measurement, you can’t see that result using the other marketing tools. So, that is a major shift that we see in the industry and this shift will continue. More and more budget will go towards experiential marketing that is able to give the client result, and of course this is informed by increased competition, saturation in the market. So every brand wants to stand out, and you can’t stand out by doing just the traditional things. What will make you stand out at the end of the day is the result you get, and you have to go the direction not underplaying the fact that you need to do a bit of everything, you need to build brand equity. As a marketing person, a professional, I must say that you need to keep building your brand equity while you are looking for the sales result. Do not lose your focus of building your brand because that takes you on the long journey, but by the end of the day, you have to report numbers. At the end of every month, at the end of every year the revenue has to grow, and that is where the brand activation companies are well supporting the different clients that they have.
How much in money terms would you say the IMC industry has contributed in building the economies of the various African countries and the continent in general?
I am not going to give you figures, but if you look at the markets you see the trends. What is marketing? Marketing is the soul of business. So that essentially answers the question. I’ll give you an example. You go launch a new product, and expect that your product will suddenly grow, and you will suddenly start selling thousands or tones of the product. It’s not going to happen, marketing comes in, and of course, you know the elements of the marketing mix. All of them have a role to play. So without marketing, a lot cannot happen, even with, besides products and services, politics, you see what our recent campaign, what role marketing, advertising, activation played beyond this shore, you see how much in the U S politics, UK politics, a whole lot of marketing is been deployed. So marketing has a lot of role to play in our economy and it is playing a lot of role in our economy.
Nigeria’s economy the way it stands today, the border closer and all of that are there roles you see marketing play in giving direction to this government in terms of policy formulation.
Well, first, if we are talking strictly about the border closure we really need to first do one analysis, what are the reasons for the border closure, has a proper analysis been done, and what is the long term strategy. I think the government needs to come up to really think through what it wants to do concerning the issue of the borders. You know, the border porosity is not just a Nigerian issue, you have it in the US, they have their problems with the borders and all that and they are trying to do certain things to reduce influx of immigrants, that is their main concern. But here, we are talking of smuggling of goods and services. What can the industry do. The industry I think through engagement with all stakeholders we can contribute as the marketing industry to ideas of what we think the government can do in terms of policing our borders because by the end of the day policing our borders is essentially the role of government. First, why are people smuggling into the country, why and if they are smuggling, do we not have, for instance at Seme borders, do we not have customs there? We do have customs. Cars are tangible objects, Rice are tangible objects. They come into the country through the borders, some will be smuggled through the bush yes, but the cars are not smuggled through the bush. So we need to be sincere about this, we need a re-organisation, a re-orientation of the security agencies to say look, it is in our interest for them to do their work efficiently because if the border points are perfectly monitored, there will be a reduction on this issue of smuggling. So, a lot lies with the government, they know what the issues are, if they do the right things, there will be a significant reduction on the issue of smuggling. So we really do not need to close our borders. And closing our borders is against the protocols we signed, the ECOWAS protocol, Africa trade agreement which the president signed to. Compared to other countries, it negates it. So we have to put the right structures in place, may be technology will help, in terms of manning our borders, in terms of controlling smuggling, but of course technology still requires people. Are we paying our custom people enough, so that any little tip of N10,000 or N20,000, they do not allow things to be smuggled in. So the whole issue of corruption in Nigeria is not what the IMC industry can tackle, because smuggling is as a result of corruption because it’s our officials that are allowing these smuggling to take place. No car is coming in mysteriously into the country, no Rice is coming in mysteriously into the country.
Can we possibly quantify the size of business currently going on in IMC industry across Africa where in you have been a dominant player. What do you consider as challenges of doing business in this market?
I don’t have the figures, but one biggest challenge we have, let me just be very specific on Nigeria, talking specifically on the area we play is that or even on the overall IMC industry is that, when companies are not doing well, there first area of target is the budget for our services. In other words they cut the marketing budget. They shut up the bottom line. That is one major challenge. The second challenge we have which again I must say is not peculiar to our IMC industry is that cost of doing business is high. I know the Central Bank is doing a lot but it’s still very expensive to borrow from the bank to do business. The third challenge is that the companies are squeezing us. They are reducing our fees. The client companies are reducing our agency fees, they are increasing the payment days, they are actually appropriating the value chain because of their sizes which is to their advantage. So only the fittest right now can survive. Many companies are struggling in the IMC industry to survive because the major companies are squeezing them. So that is a big challenge and I think the other challenge that I see is that, especially in the activation area, experiential area is that there is a whole lot of companies that are been set up, if you like, they are portfolio companies or agencies that are not giving us a good reputation and sadly they diminish our value because they go to these companies and they agree to take any offer and that is not good for our industry. So we operate within the same micro economic environment like other companies in Nigeria. So we face the same pain that they face, cost of running your overheads are high, you have to buy diesel, you have to buy everything and in the mist of these we are also been harassed by regulatory agencies every day, different taxes to be paid to different government agencies, LASAA and all that. So, too many issues that businesses in Africa or rather in Nigeria are facing. In Kenya for example, my office in Kenya, I do not have to border anything about generators, it is taken for granted that power will be there. So that is just an example of how business can become much easier for us in Nigeria. The issue of power, a lot of companies spend so much money on generating electricity, and it makes business not a worthwhile to be for them. The profit that they should have put in their bank account goes into paying for utilities that they shouldn’t pay for.
What would you proffer as solutions to these challenges having been on every side of the business divide, the clients and now on the agency side?
I think the companies should recognize that the IMC companies are their partners. I think that is very key. They should not see them as companies that they use just to get results to their advantage. They should see them as partners, as stakeholders who are there to add value to the business. And I must say that we are actually partners to some of our clients but not all of them. Some of them think that, ok, we give you a brief, we like your proposal, go and do it, and that is it. Transaction. So long as a client sees you as a partner, you are all ready to give of your best to that client. And some of my clients are like that. But we cannot say same for all the clients that we work for or all the clients that my colleagues in the industry work for. So clients must see us as partners. Secondly, clients must also recognize that we are businesses and so they should not exploit us because they are stronger than us. That is very important. For some clients now, they tell you the payment days is 120, so imagine, if you go and borrow money from the bank, you are going to execute the job before submitting invoice. Before 120 days start to count you pay interest to the bank and they tell you your agency fee is 15 percent. So tell me how much money you are going to make from the business. So I think they need to rethink their attitude towards the members of the IMC industry and I think that is very key. So if they see us as partners, if they treat us with better respect, they will be better served.
Some IMC industry players feel somewhat challenged with the arrival of digital technology. What should be the right attitude of practitioners to the new digital order?
I think there will always be a future. However they should recognize that even before the digital era, there has always been changes. I still remember back in the days, we would ask the outdoor companies, they will bring sample of their printed paper, we will analyze it before they go and put such on their billboard, but their came different methods of printing, you moved from paper to other technology, from that you are now talking of digital billboards all over the place. Now you can measure digitally what is happening, audience measurement and all of that, so changes would come. The digital communication, social media or digital media or as you may want to call it has come here to stay, more innovations will come, but the question is will the traditional media die? No. There is a whole lot that is happening. They themselves will begin to work with some of these tools that the digital communication offers even to do their job better. I give you an example, there is virtually no brief that we get right now that does not include an aspect of digital. So the traditional will remain, it will not die, but they must adapt and accept the fact that things are changing rapidly, so they are not going to die, but they must accept that things are changing and they must be ready to change and see how they can include elements of the new media, so called new media in their delivery.
What are your projections as a company, an organization in the next five years for instance, and IMC industry of the future?
Well, the industry will continue to grow. The only limitation will be the economy. If the economy continues to grow, the IMC industry will continue to grow. So what will limit our growth will be the economy, but as a company, in the next five years, we see ourselves doing much better than we are doing right now in Nigeria and having further footprint in many other countries across the continent,
What would be your advice to companies and business operators on how to survive in the present day harsh economic conditions?
Keep reinventing. They have to keep reinventing themselves because challenges will keep coming, scenarios will keep changing, but if you remain where you are, then you will die. You have examples of different companies around the world, major companies that we were familiar with, Kodak we know, Xerox we know, we can continue to mention so many companies that when we were growing up, we knew who they were, they were at the top of their games but today they are no more because they didn’t reinvent themselves. So things will keep changing. So companies must keep continuously reinventing themselves, continuously innovate, watch the trends, where is the future, what is the future trend, where are people going, what are they likely to want to consume in the next 4,5,10 years, what’s my innovation lifeline like to meet those needs. But if you are just satisfied that my product is doing very well, today am the market leader and you remain there, somebody else is thinking with new ideas, looking at trends and coming up with better products, and your products will be forgotten.
What’s your general view regarding industry regulation. Are there things you would want done differently and how?
I think there is something wrong with regulation. APCON has no governing council in the past five years and that’s an unfortunate situation. I really do not understand why government should not be able to constitute for five years. I do not want to sound political, but it’s unfortunate that it has not happened. But generally, regulations are good, and if you know, APCON board is made up of professionals who know the industry, and so whatever you are doing would be in the interest of the industry because you need sanity, you need control. For example, you don’t want people to just run ads that offends the rest of the society, that are out of line, so, the regulations are good. I belong to EXMAN, I belong to APCON for example, so, there is nothing wrong with regulation. Regulations for any society are always good. If I find myself in regulation, I think for EXMAN specifically, I would ensure that EXMAN gets better treatment from the marketing industry because right now, along with the advertising industry, the AAAN for example, the way they are been treated by the companies, EXMAN is not been given the same recognition by the companies, the companies just wake up to tell you they have just changed your payment terms, we’ve changed our agency fees, and we are not able to fight them, but with the weight of APCON for example, of which we are a part of the sectorial groups in APCON, If APCON was fully constituted, with their help, am sure there would be a change in that respect. So Regulation is good, the role of APCON is good, there might be issues from time to time with different stakeholders but I have no problems with regulation.
Should APCON truly be involved in the regulation of social media advertising as it is been suggested in some quarters.
Well, I do not see why there should not be regulation, to be very honest, but the issue is what are you regulating, how are you regulating. You and I have seen the different challenges with social media of recent. You sit down in your bedroom concoct stories that can lead to loss of lives, that can cause social upheaval, that can cause a lot of trouble. You can sit down in your bedroom and generate a story just to influence elections like we see with the British, the Brexit, you saw the American elections and all around the world you can sit down somewhere, set up funny accounts just to influence public opinion, why should there not be regulation? But what regulation, I think those are the debates that we should have. For me, the debate should not be whether there should be regulations or not.
