Digital is our current reality – Dr. Tayo Oyedeji
By Abimbola Mohammed
Dr. Tayo Oyedeji, Chief Executive Officer of Publicis Groupe/ Redefini Nigeria, has affirmed that digital is not the future, but the current reality of the marketing communications industry as people, he noted, spend more time on their cell phones than they did a few years ago. He recalled that agencies that believed digital was the future of advertising now exist with a digital reality.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, the industry egghead, while affirming the role of digital in Nigeria’s Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) industry and a shift in media consumption, noted that Nigerian agencies are good at strategy, creativity, but still struggle with implementation.
“I think, by far, we are probably the most strategic and most creative people in the advertising industry. The only place where we struggle is in the implementation. On the strategic level we are really good, we can be compared to the best in the world; on creativity we are amazing but sometimes the production behind our creativity hinders our creativity,” he said.
Speaking on new insights that accelerated the shift to digital and its impact to the IMC industry, Dr. Oyedeji said people now live their lives on the digital screens.
“A few years ago, we used to say that digital is the future of advertising, but our current reality is that people wake up in the morning and the first contact is their cell phones. People literally consume media on digital screens and the internet, so as professionals, the first thing we do at Insight and all our other agencies is to institute a model that we no longer see traditional in our mind set. We think digital first and then leverage traditional media because for people, digital is number one.”
According to the agency boss, at the planning stage, digital used to take between 2 to 3 percent of the whole budget, but now it is getting close to 30 percent of the whole budget as brand owners are beginning to see that people are digital first.
“Yes, when I came in 2010, digital was two to three percent of the whole budget; right now it’s getting closer to 30 percent, brand owners are beginning to understand that people are digital first and our job as advertising professionals is to know where the people are. So, digitals just help clients to reach their consumers in the digital space from social media to everything that has to do with the media,” he revealed.
Speaking on what will drive adspend in the year 2022, Dr. Oyedeji said: “I think the largest source of spend is going to be technology, primarily because it has the potential to scale anything and everything. We are beginning to see scale even in Nigerian finance.”
He hinted that his agency has just started a digital only agency, which is its first stand alone, digital agency in Lagos.
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