Experiential marketers demand new law for agency fee
Practitioners under the auspices of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) have unanimously advocated for a new law that would be binding on all its members on a particular fee that they should charge their clients.
They made the called during the EXMAN Day which include the training for CEOs and Senior Executives themed: “Turning Passion to Profit”
They also lamented over the number of days in the contractual agreement within which they can fully process their IPOs for the jobs or activations that they have done for their clients.
For instance, most multinationals that used to pay 15% as agency fees have cut it down to between 7 and 10% while the 60 days within which the contract is signed has extended to 150 days before payments from IPOs can be fully made.
Speaking during the interactive session among its members, the Managing Director, Towncriers Limited and former President of EXMAN, Mr. Kayode Olagesin, reiterated the need to urgently come up with a new law that would be binding on both the agencies and the multinationals.
Olagesin noted that various moves had been made to reach out to the multinationals in order to come to terms of agreement but they have refused to adhere to the association’s demand.
“We have tried to speak to the multinationals to reach an agreement but the truth is that they don’t want to talk to us. It is high time that we formulate a law that will be binding on us. As long as we don’t have any form of law they will continue to treat us badly”
“It is a buyers’ market and that will continue to determine the terms. We also have event agencies and consultancies that are eating up into our businesses. All these are the challenges that we are facing and we must address them”
Speaking in the same vein, the President of EXMAN, Mr. Kehinde Salami, pointed out that most multinationals are doing the business for their selfish gains.
Salami stressed that his company have had course to walk away from Coca-Cola and 9mobile businesses when it realized it was not making any profit from the business.
“I personally wrote two letters to the Marketing Director of Coca-Cola in August 2017 to be precise informing them that we were no more interested in the business because it was not profitable to us”
Emphasizing that he would maintain the standards of the association, Salami said: “There is an ethics and disciplinary committee code that has been included in our code of conduct and the constitution which is reviewed 2019 and those things are the things that we have been able to put in place to ensure that not only standards are met, ethics that guides the industry continues to be sustained.”
“There is a chairman of the committee, there is an entire team that is looking into that and multinationals are free to send letters to the president of EXMAN who would then instigate a probe or investigate what the allegations are and at the same time agencies themselves can also look into each other and if there are issues, they are tabled and if they are found wanting, the right course of the law within our code of conducts and constitution will be taken as sanctions against them”
Meanwhile, the Managing Director, Neo Media and Marketing, Mr. Ehi Braimah, called on agencies to re-invent themselves in the current challenges facing the industry.
Braimah said: “You have to wait for 90 or 120 days before IPOs are fully paid, you pay about 27% on bank loans. We must change our business models so that we can make progress”
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