Japa Syndrome: Nigeria’s MarCom industry in crisis as brain drain spikes
Joseph Ekeng
Like many other sectors in Nigeria, the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) sector has been under tremendous pressure in the recent past. Two economic recessions between 2015 and 2022 and a Covid-19 pandemic that grounded the global economy have resulted in weak growths and even weaker margins.
According to recent reports, many of the agencies are walking on thin ice, in an era where the economic downturn has forced clients to drastically cut down on marketing budgets, and some of them are also finding alternatives to traditional marketing and advertising.
According to a report in Thisday, many first and second-generation agencies are struggling to survive. “You have a lot of agencies who in the books, they are looking profitable, but in terms of cash flow, they are barely surviving,” Kelechi Odigbo, former President of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), said.
Yet in the face of these daunting challenges, the agencies are now grappling with what appears to be a rapid outflow of talent from the industry, a situation that has further worsened the skills gap challenge in the industry.
Recent findings by MARKETING EDGE showed how many top marketing talents are abandoning Nigerian agencies in search of a better life in Europe and America.
The rapid exodus which many Nigerians have nicknamed “Japa” has been ongoing for a long, but it has become worse in recent years as the economy increasingly weakens.
In an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, a top executive at one of Nigeria’s leading agencies lamented how between December 2022 and January 2023, he lost five managers.
According to the Account Director, who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the subject, four of the managers left the country for greener pastures abroad, while one wanted to set up his agency.
“Their exit almost got me into trouble because my management blamed me for the exodus. They told me that people don’t leave a company, rather they leave their bosses,” the source said.
The Marketing Edge source noted that he was spared after he stood his ground and insisted that a lot of young people are disillusioned because of the harsh economic situation.
The source also noted that the exodus is an industry-wide crisis because agencies like Connect Marketing, Ideas House, EXP and others are also affected.
The widening skills gap created by talent exodus is also reportedly causing tension between agencies and their clients. “The clients want top talents to work on their brands and when the agencies cannot guarantee that, the client may move their account,” the source said
This has resulted in some agencies losing accounts to rivals in the recent past. And because no agency wants to lose major accounts, they have become desperate in their quest to get the best talents in the industry.
The competition for talent has become so intense that some agencies are ready to break the bank to land their prize. More so, poaching has become endemic. “Everybody does that now,” the source said.
Even the AAAN President Steve Babaeko alluded to this when he said that all the agencies are fishing from the same pond.
Not wanting to surrender to the situation, agencies are developing innovative solutions to the human resource crisis. Some of them have established in-house training schools to discover and develop talents.
Others have partnered with brands and marketing academies like Orange Academy and O2 Academy to enhance the supply of marketing and creative talents.
But while these approaches can solve the talent discovery problem, what about the talent retention problem?
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