CASERS rolls out the drum to celebrate 3 decades of advertising excellence
One of Nigeria’s leading agency networks, Complete Advertising Services better known as CASERS Group has just clocked 30 years as a business concern. To celebrate the milestone, CASERS has rolled out a set of activities which climax with an exhibition dinner slated for 13 December 2017 in Lagos and later on in Douala.
The company has also announced a number of changes to its business model to expand its share of market and position CASERS better for growth.
At a Lagos press conference on Thursday to unveil the anniversary Programme, Ikechi Odigbo, Vice Chairman of CASERS Group praised the doggedness and resilience of the Group’s Founder and Chairman Enyi Odigbo for the sustainability and phenomenal growth of the company. He added that the Chairman’s innovativeness and vision set the agency apart from others very early in its journey and made it the darling of clients.
“From the beginning, we never saw ourselves as an agency that waits for clients’ briefs; rather we were positioned as an extension of the clients’ business; always looking for a way to add value to their brands.
“This has positioned CASERS as a thought leader and a change agent in the industry,” he said.
He added that these strong values won the agency big clients from the early days of its business and some of those clients have remained loyal to the agency till date.
Meanwhile, as part of the anniversary packages, the company has rolled-out activities including art challenge called Influence Contest with $12 000 as prize money. Then, a Corporate Social Responsibility plan was also unveiled. The CSR initiative which is called Youth Challenge will see 30 young creatives of 25 years and less awarded scholarships.
Mr. Enyi Odigbo said this was CASERS Group’s contribution to the development of the next generation of industry leaders in Nigeria.
CASERS Group was set up in 1987 after Mr. Enyi Odigbo quit his plum job at Insight Communications where he was an Account Director. The agency has risen very fast through the ranks to become a dominant player in Nigeria and one of the most awarded. From just one agency, it has become a network that covers other sectors of advertising including outdoor advertising, experiential marketing and of course advertising. CASERS Group is now made up of DDB Lagos, the flagship, BBDO, Capital Media, Activ8, Magenta, and Media, Nexus.
And in 2015, after a bidding contest, it acquired one of the biggest indigenous owned agency networks across West and Central Africa, Mawal Group, owned by MW network. The acquisition gave CASERS an unprecedented footprint in six markets across the region, including Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Guinea-Conakry, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. And much later it also bought a small stake in a Ghanaian agency. Till date, CASERS remain the only Nigerian agency with such extensive presence in the sub-region.
Speaking about the new phase of CASERS Group’s business, Ikechi Odigbo said under this new plan, CASERS will seize to out-source some of its functions to other companies. Some of these responsibilities which include production duties will now be done by the Group with help from SPACE, a South African based production and digital company which is now looking to deepen its footprint in the Nigerian market.
The company has stressed that the relationship with SPACE was not an affiliation but a business partnership that will be mutually beneficial to both companies.
He explained that the changes in business structure became imperative because of the changing dynamics of the marketing communications industry. He noted that as a result of over-regulation and fragmentation, the marketing communications sector has witness a decline in value and reduced margin, hence the need to remodel.
Also with regards to remodeling the company, the network announced that it was shifting away from client based revenue to implementing business-to-customer strategies in order to open up more streams of revenue for the company and facilitate growth.
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