Advertising agency operatives urged to adopt new business model
Advertising agency operatives in the country have been advised on the need to adopt a new business model by creating independent digital arms if they were to overcome their present challenges and prosper in their professional careers.
In addition, by adopting the new business models, the agencies must ensure they hire more technology-inclined younger generation practitioners to head and effectively manage the digital departments for efficiency and profitability.
Handing down the advice recently was the Executive Director, FCMB Plc, Olu Akanmu while speaking at the year 2020 business outlook seminar organised by the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) in Lagos.
Akanmu, speaking on the seminar theme, “Nigerian Business Environment in the Year 2020: Implications for Advertising Agencies”, observed that the current business challenges experienced by agency practitioners were common to business operators across all other sectors, including banking, adding that agencies must reinvent their business models in order to thrive and survive.
“AAAN as organisation must reflect and change its business models. You need to engage yourselves more in the digital business. Everybody is experiencing the same thing you are going through; some people are disrupting you. Do more of digital business. The banking sector is doing the same and the media has done it.
“Agencies must reflect and adopt autonomous business model. Bring in young people that are technology savvy. I think there lies the future of advertising agency business,” he emphasised.
Taking a critical assessment of the current economic performance record of the Federal Government, the banking expert who said he was neither optimistic nor pessimistic on the records, maintained that despite the impressive records, Nigeria remained largely a very poor country where 1 out of every 2 Nigerian citizen was living below the poverty line.
According to him, the year 2018 data on job loss revealed that about 450,000 Nigerians were out of jobs, a figure representing about 40 per cent of unemployment and under employment.
He noted that Nigeria as a nation could be compared to a broken triangle where the middle was broken and falling to the bottom with a high rate of emigration, adding that the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector had been making losses and the marketing profession was talking to just about 30 to 40 percent of the economy.
He said that a lot of client companies could not patronize the traditional advertising agencies due to noticeable shortfalls in technology, pointing out that under the circumstance advertising agencies needed to reinvent their business in order to better serve their clients and be able to advise them on how to remodel their operations.
In his own contribution, Publisher/CEO of Businessday, Frank Aigbogun urged the agency practitioners as communication experts to be more sensitive on how they monitor changes in the marketplace by improving on their relevance to the client’s business so as to be seen more as partners rather than just service providers.
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