Jude Odia tasks agencies on influencer marketing for growth
By Oghale Mafuru
As part of efforts to break into the new dispensation of marketing communication, the Managing Director of Starcom Media Perspectives, Jude Odia, has charged agencies to expand their tentacles to embrace influencer marketing as an avenue for growth and resource optimization.
The advertising juggernaut, who emphasized the need for agencies to embrace partnership and collaboration, noted that influencer marketing has not been fully harnessed by practitioners.
In the same breath, the advertising professional said that competition must be re-defined to allow collaboration and partnerships to exist.
He said, “So we must re-define competition really because sometimes where you really need help, it is those people you perceive as competition that comes to help. It is about understanding how to innovate and know that the person you compete with today is not necessarily your enemy tomorrow”.
The IMC expert opined that competition has taken a new dimension and asserted that influencer marketing holds a huge potential for revenue generation as clients are now moving budget in that direction.
In his words, “We are seeing ourselves operating in a wider ecosystem that is not just marketing communication. For example, influencer marketing, the more we distance ourselves from that space, the more they eat our pie because budget is not growing. Budget is shrinking and also has been re-directed.”
Mr. Odia, who affirmed that the influencer marketing ecosystem in Nigeria is under tapped, advised agencies to develop requisite skills to operate in that space as it is crucial to the maximization of the opportunities inherent therein.
“It has not been fully optimized. People are paying millions of dollars for endorsements. They are developing robotics influencers. So we are just starting in that space and we can grow it. But to grow it, it requires expertise, which also requires partnerships.”
He challenged practitioners to collaborate with the existing players in that sphere to enhance their value offering and revenue generation channels, noting that clients are more interested in the solutions agencies provide for them.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.