IMC expert scores industry operations high in third quarter 2019
An Integrated Marketing Communications Industry (IMC) practitioner, Kehinde Salami, has taken a holistic examination of business operations in the sector, especially in the period spanning the third quarter of business year 2019, and submitted that the industry fared increasingly better, far above previous records of preceding years.
Salami, Managing Director/CEO, Ideas House Communications Limited, was of the opinion that general business outlook for the industry appeared healthy in the period under review, judging from the fact that competition had become a lot more robust and well defined across the sector, and brands were offering market shares within a highly competitive market space.
“Yes, speaking with quite a number of my colleagues, both of the experiential space, advertising, creative services and the digital field, I think the outlook is good. I don’t think it’s as bad as it was last year. It has certainly gotten better than it was twelve months ago for a number of players and I’m happy about that. The competition that we are seeing now is a lot more defined and robust; and brands are offering market shares within a highly competitive market space,” he said.
According to the former EXMAN president, the common notion and general belief that marketing budgets were shrinking across sectors was no truth after all. He rather noted that what had happened over time was that marketing budgets continually realigned to what he described as “where lies the value”. To that extent, he said brand managers needed to realign and reposition themselves to where truly, the value lies.
“I think you have to define your own rules. I believe your role as the CEO is to redefine the rules and re-define it in such a way that it will favour and enable you to position appropriately. People keep telling me that marketing budgets have shrunk or are cut, and I just laugh. Marketing budgets have not been cut, what they do is to realign to where value lies. So, what are you doing to realign and reposition to where value lies? That’s my position,” he stressed.
Taking a futuristic look at unfolding trends in the IMC sector, the agency boss projected that the industry was bound to witness a lot more institutionalisation of its internal processes far beyond the current highly fragmented and individualised ownership structures.
“I think the future of the industry is very, very good. I see a lot more collaborations. I see a lot more specialist services. I see a few mergers and acquisitions. You see, a lot of agency business is driven by what I call owner operator where the owner is the driver. So, it’s not institutionalised the way many other industries like Law firms and other specialist offerings have been institutionalised.
“I see a new wave within the next ten years because the CEOs are probably between their early to mid 40s. So, a lot of them will be over-reaching themselves am sure in about ten years from now. So, I see a lot more consolidations and collaborations and hopefully a lot more institutions been built out of an industry that is highly fragmented and individualistic,” he said.
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