Advertising agency practitioners optimistic for positive growth performance in 2020
Stakeholders across Nigeria’s advertising industry has been speaking on their various expectations for the industry in the period of 2020 business year and going forth in the new decade.
Speaking recently in an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), Ikechi Odigbo was of the view that the industry would experience a rebound for a better growth performance in the New Year despite the downturn experienced in business fortunes by agency practitioners the year before.
According to the AAAN president who also is Vice Chairman/CEO, DDB Lagos, a leading creative agency in Nigeria, the predictions is based on a number of positive indications which includes among other things, that as much as the business drought had lingered, advertisers would need to continue to advertise their brands and products in a bid to maintain their share of spend, wallet and mind.
Advertising agencies he believes were fast becoming more nimble, more flexible and more innovative in terms of their service offerings delivery over time and are now providing activations support, digital support rather than depend only on ATL (Above –The- Line). “They are also extending their offerings to cover the BTL (Below – The – Line) and creative services,” he said.
In a similar vein, Lanre Adisa, Managing Director/CEO, Noah’s Ark Communications Limited, a creative one-stop shop, added also his views to what should be the expectations for Nigeria’s advertising industry in 2020.
For Adisa, advertising agencies that would survive in the 2020 business year must be those that would be more inventive and be able to think differently in the face of emerging challenges in the industry.
He said though the outgoing year had presented a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly with several of the industry legacy agencies either going completely under or becoming comatose, a few other young agencies were springing up here and there and proving their mettle in the creative enterprise.
He added that with the current economic policies of government being not so friendly, and economists pointing to negative economic indices, the 2020 business year might definitely pose very serious challenges and agencies must think differently and be very inventive if they must survive.
Also speaking, Funmi Onabolu, Group Managing Director/CEO, Cosse Advertising, opined that the future of the industry appeared hopeful in the New Year but added that despite the optimism, the nation’s economy continues to undergo serious pressures that would definitely have a spiral effect on businesses, not excluding advertising.
In his word: “What we used to know as the advertising agencies of old has moved and is now such a fragmentation of solution offerings and quite a lot of practitioners have been caught napping.”
He added that all over the world, the marketing end of things was going through a challenge and things have become so fragmented. “While the consumer is looking in so many directions, there are increasingly so many offerings, so many ways to get across to and engage the consumer,” he noted.
Also expressing optimistic view for positive expectations for the industry, the Managing Director/CEO Bluebird Communications Limited, Kayode Ebatamehi, expressed hopes that the advertising industry would bolster based on some positive indications that the general Nigerian economy would improve for the better in the New Year.
According to him, technology, innovations, data and creativity are the major forces that will drive growth in the new decade, and interestingly advertising is well enabled by the force as they do not work against advertising but rather actually help in propelling the growth.
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