Google PR account moves from Quadrant to South African agency
Nigeria’s leading public relations agency, The Quadrant Company ,is no longer in charge of Google’s strategic communication and engagement business in Nigeria.
The agency was cut lose by Google in an apparent attempt to realign its communication operations in sub-Saharan Africa.
The business has now been awarded to a South African agency Irvine Partners. The readjustment also affected the Kenyan operations and that means Irvine Partners will now oversee Google’s PR efforts in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya from its base in Cape Town.
MARKETING EDGE gathered that the realignment was ordered by Google’s global office in California as the tech giant seeks ways to cut cost and strengthen its footprint on the continent, which has seem a significant rise in the tech company’s investment in recent times.
Irvine Partner, which is led by Rachel Irvine, was first appointed to the public relations business of Google in 2015, when it was awarded Google’s PR business in South Africa. The agency was declared winner after a five-way pitch against other notable agencies in the country.
Irvine Partner has an office in Lagos where skeletal operations are done, but everything else is decided from South Africa. Besides Google, Irvine Partner also does PR for a number of notable brands including Protea Hotels, Marriot, Turkish Airline, Cape Town Tourism et al.
Irvine Partners’ entry into the Nigerian market apparently adds fuel to an ongoing debate about proper regulation in the marketing communication sector. Indigenous operations have in recent times expressed worry over the rate at which Nigerian marketing communication businesses are awarded to foreign agencies at the expense of local ones, maintaining that it undermines the local economy.
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