Experiential marketers disagree over Q1 performance
…projects growth in Q2
Experiential marketers under the aegis of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) have expressed mixed reactions over the performance of the industry in the first quarter of 2019.
While some lamented that the industry was really tough during the electioneering period, others argued that experiential marketers did averagely well in their businesses.
The Managing Director, EXP Marketing Nigeria Limited, Mrs. Rosemary Akpo, lamented that the first quarter of 2019 was really tough due to the electioneering period and coupled with the fact that most companied were not spending.
Akpo pointed out that due to the uncertainty at that time, many brands and companies cut down on their spend while others refused to spend as that went a long way in affecting their businesses.
In her words: “The first quarter of 2019 was really tough and that is the conversation I was having with my colleague recently. It was tough and it was driven mostly by the fact that there was an election and the fact that a lot of companies did not want to spend.”
“If marketing companies don’t spend, the experiential companies also don’t enjoy that peace and business growth, so because of the election there was little spend. In fact, I was doing the analysis on the spend per quarter and I realized that in the experiential space, quarter one spend was the lowest spend that we have had in the last five years”
The MD of EXP Marketing, however, noted that she envisaged growth in the industry in the second quarter and throughout the rest of the year.
Asked if she sees growth in the industry in the second quarter, Akpo said: “Yes, my expectation is that there will be growth this quarter and the reason why I strongly believe so is that if the marketing team don’t create experiences for people, they won’t buy into their product, so products and brands need to continue to make their brands relevant to consumers and they can only do that by the role that we play for them, so yes, I am expecting growth.”
“My April numbers look good, I reviewed the numbers this morning and the April numbers are looking very good, so what it means is that we will still enjoy growth this year but quarter one was a dip in our revenue drive.” She added.
Contrary to the above views, the Managing Director, Towncriers Limited and former President of EXMAN, Mr. Kayode Olagesin, noted that most experiential agencies did averagely well in their businesses in the first quarter of 2019.
Olagesin stressed that despite the electioneering period in the first quarter, some brands still did some activations and made use of some experiential agencies.
He said: “I am saying to you that a lot of clients actually started doing things and activations from the beginning of 2019, a number of clients started doing things saying this is what we are going to do this year and they hit the ground running and agencies that are pro-active also hit the ground running, so first quarter might have been of average in terms of performance but a number of things were already being signed or being discussed which are pipeline that we should expect to see manifest in the second quarter.”
Olagesin, however, corroborated the opinion of Mrs. Akpo, noting that the second quarter of 2019 is expected to witness a lot of growth in the experiential marketing space.
In his words:”I think that 2019 has started on a positive note. I think that it was good that the elections came and went and there was not much rancor over the outcome of the election; so everybody is just saying let’s get going, there is some level of business optimism right now showing that 2019 will be a good year”
“I think that optimism is driving a lot of what people are doing and I also believe that, as you can see the dollar prices have been reasonable. I think it is about 70, 71 dollars per barrel now, so even from the government perspective, the government oil price benchmark was around sixty something dollars so what it means is that we are earning a bit more so in that front, there is some relative comfort that that offers to government owned funding of the budget.”
“If you look at that and then you look at the optimism of businesses as a whole, it is influencing a number of things and the fact that government has also reviewed wages now and sign that into law also means that it will positively impact purchasing power and again that the government is also looking more towards the economy”
“Now they are talking about the economy more and recently again President Muhammadu Buhari said that they want to relax collaterals for farmers with small holdings to be able to access single digit funds for agriculture and that is also a very big step.”
“So, I think that there is reason for one to be consciously optimistic about the way the economy will go for 2019 and what we have seen is a reflection of that in the way businesses are also behaving. I believe that the second quarter will experience growth in the experiential marketing space”
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