Experiential agencies should embrace intellectual property protection to stay relevant – Tolulope Medebem
Just one interaction and you will know immediately that Tolulope Medebem is into marketing. Her wits, candour and the way she speaks say it all. But above all of that is the fact that she understands the experiential marketing terrain so very well. In an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE’s Kasim Bakare, the MD, AsterIML, with over two decades industry experience across several sectors, shares her insights on several issues relating to the marketing communications industry. Excerpts.
How would you assess the experiential marketing industry in the age of the ‘new normal’?
Honestly, we all are or should be celebrating our ‘wins’ right now (big, small, whatever happens), especially as we adapt to the changes in terms of policies, budgets and the actual expression of our ‘creativity’.
I mentioned celebration because some have had to shut down (hopefully temporarily), jobs have been lost, a lot of our freelancers (for whom we create employment) have also been out of work BUT as we all gradually adapt to our new models of operations, we also access the business and realign in terms of our ‘fortunes’
With Covid-19 restrictions being relaxed allowing more experiential marketing activities to be carried out in Q2 of the year. What is your projection and business outlook for the Q3?
Q3 is looking better, the experimental and IMC frontiers (generally) are opening up and I believe that we are all very hopeful as an industry. At Asteriml, we are thankful for new briefs and a couple of pitches, hopeful that they will come to fruition in Q3.
As someone who has worked on the client and agency sides for over two decades, I know you have a deep understanding of the unethical/unhealthy competition among agencies in the IMC. Some analysts believe the situation has endured because of several factors that have to do with the agencies, regulators and the clients/brands. Talking from the agency side, how can this unhealthy agency competition be managed or curbed?
This is something that needs a bit of a think. Agency competition didn’t start today and I doubt it will end today as I believe it’s as old as time. Having experienced it over time, I would liken it to sibling rivalry. Just like the older child needs to understand that there is more fun in numbers, the same way as agencies, we need to understand that collaboration benefits all parties involved.
Truth, most agencies might not want to collaborate for different reasons I believe they imagine they are protecting their businesses and this can be rightly understood. In the long run, though, I believe, that agencies would need to get past all these pre-conceived notions and collaborate (hopefully) to work together and produce the best possible campaigns for their various clients.
Truth, some clients might have agencies that they are more comfortable with BUT long-term, integration/collaboration might serve the client/brands better. This is not to say that even having done everything right, there won’t be bickering and rivalry (as daily new agencies come up, clients pitch, and new teams are on-boarded and added on to the creative / agency teams) and truth, the client might be best served to just take a seat and watch it play out. In all this though, the client must also be seen/perceived as open to all agencies within the team on equal terms (as best as possible), and each agency is credited with their ideas/solutions even if and when they won’t be implementing and this way, the teams see themselves as part of a bigger picture and hopefully integrate.
An adjunct to that question is the issue of violation of intellectual property of agencies. While the agencies fight basically because they are trying to survive, the right to own their intellectual property through their creative work is usually trampled upon. How can the issue of intellectual property violation be addressed in the IMC?
Like I mentioned already, a start, would be if the client is seen/perceived as being open and ALL agencies are credited with their ideas/solutions even if and when they won’t be implementing. This is also one reason why the advertising agencies have been able to work with pitch rejection fee, which I believe is in effect, so at the end of the day, all their effort on a particular pitch will not be in vain which is way different for us within the experiential industry. I was speaking to a client recently and we were talking about registering the agency and the reply was “you do know that it’s ‘pay as you go’ with experiential agencies right?”.
Moving forward as well, it would do us well as experiential agencies to come up with our property (Sponsorship / Intellectual property), that can be patented, copyrighted and fully owned by the agency and I believe some of my colleagues are already walking that road as we speak and hopefully, some of us look forward to joining and walking this path as well.
How can we have a healthy client-agency relationship in view of decreasing spend by clients in the integrated marketing communication industry?
As far as I’m concerned, keeping a relationship going is in everyone’s interest. Agency and client relationship are just like a marriage (yes, marriage), a two-way street that requires trust, honesty, understanding, transparency, and mutual respect, thus, means simply developing a relationship and hopefully keeping it.
Once a relationship has been developed and established then it’s the nurturing which takes place by: (a) Clarity in/of communication (b) trust and (c) Trusting the process on both sides (this is where the challenges usually spring from). On the one hand, the agency needs to make the client know and understand the process (including duration and all it entails) as well as updating the client based on agreed timelines and metrics.
On the client-side, we understand that it can be frustrating to pay big and not see results BUT based on set and agreed on milestones, the agency should and would have provided realistic expectations. Allow the agency to come up with the solutions (after all, it’s why they are being paid, right?).
In recent times, many agencies have had to lay off staff, reduce salaries or look for alternative sources to shore up their revenue portfolio. How are you dealing with the wage bill/profile at Aster IML, in view of the present economic realities?
We are coping, I guess. Like I said to someone recently, we are thankful for those clients that have helped us to keep our head afloat. We lost some staff BUT that was to be expected, we move. We are not doing those big-ticket activities yet BUT, we are hopeful that as the horizon opens up better, we look forward to doing even better. Now isn’t the time to lose hope or rest on our oars, now for us is the time to dig in even more tenaciously and hopefully this pays up ahead.
.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.