Media buying agencies to leverage technology to achieve set goals in 2021
By Abimbola Mohammed
2020 was a year of turbulence so seismic in scale and rapid in impact that the world is still trying to adjust to its effect. So many brands, organizations and even countries are still struggling to adjust to the new normal. While some brands and organizations that were strong before the pandemic lost their positions, others rose from the bottom to the top.
As the pandemic continues to threaten the growth of so many countries and companies, media buying agencies and marketing practitioners in Nigeria also feel the heat of the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as little or none of their plans and projection for the year was met.
This has made Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN) to look beyond the troubled waters of 2020, while concluding plans to leverage innovation and technology to recover what was lost during the pandemic.
Since its mission is focused on moving the media industry forward and duly recognizing the need to work with other sectoral bodies in achieving its goals, MIPAN said it is going to deploy technology, data and innovation to achieve its set goals for 2021, and will also remain slim and focused in its operations.
The Executive Secretary of MIPAN, Eki Adzufeh, during an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, spoke on the high and low points of the media industry in 2020. He noted that the media advertising industry suffered the same fate with all other industries except for a few, adding that the pandemic came as a surprise, but businesses had to survive and have indeed survived.
Adzufeh pointed out high points of the media industry to include reinvention and retooling of business models, embracing of technology for smarter work and saving cost, reduction of cost of doing business by becoming ‘slimmer’ in staff strength, virtual/remote working which shot up production with less movement in traffic and some very busy CEOs having some rest and taking some online courses to improve themselves. He, however, named the low points to include reduced advertising budget across clientele, loss of clients, continuous reduction of fees of all kinds from the clients to the agencies, unfortunate reduction of staff strength in some cases and or reduction of staff emoluments in order to keep the businesses afloat and so on.
He projected that at best businesses will remain at their present positions in Q1 2021, noting that with the officially announced recession, very little will be expected to be different from Q4 2020 position. He mentioned that cost cutting from every industry and sector will be the watchword, adding, however, that the agencies and companies with thought leadership will not only survive but improve as things can never be the same anymore.
Adzufeh disclosed that MIPAN’s ability to cope with the new normal is because it has deliberately remained slim and focused in its operations. “We have always remained cost conscious and used our relevant Standing Committees to execute our plans professionally in line with our set objectives. The Adgenda of the new President Femi Adelusi has been followed with the selfless contributions of other Executive Council members who have been very focused and cooperative. This is what we intend to continue in the new 2021 year.”
The Managing Director of Momentum Media, Akeem Aweroro, in his view, described 2020 as the most difficult year globally, emphasizing that the difficulty was worsened in Nigeria by other issues such as #Endsars protests, insecurity, unprecedented hyper-inflation and other socio-economic/political constraints.
“Now to the question of high and low points of the media industry, of course the industry is not insulated from the general economy. So it was severely impacted by the lockdown. Many media outfits and marketing communication agencies were nearly strangulated as a result of many advertisers virtually stopping advertising. For instance, many newspapers had to cut down pagination/print-run to less than 50% for most of the time in the face of dwindling ad revenue and circulation etc.”
“I think one of the few highs for the industry will be in the area of innovations largely engendered by the lockdown. A lot of otherwise physical/analogue aspects of operations had to be digitalized and taken online with improved efficiencies. Online advertising of course relatively fared much better to offline during the year.”
On his prediction/projection for Q1 2021, he said: “Historically, Q1 is usually on the low side for the industry as many advertisers are yet to finalize marketing communication budgeting for the year. And the unpleasant carry-overs from 2020 such as the recession and possibility of another lockdown due to 2nd wave Covid-19 would appear to further dampen the picture. But if we are able to exit recession before the end of Q1 as being projected and we are able avert another lockdown, we should be seeing some shine in the general economic landscape especially with the record-time approval and expected implementation of the 2021 budgets by the federal and many state governments.”
Corroborating the foregoing views, the COO, Great Measures Media Network, Yinka Bamidele, cited the year’s high point to include the way agencies were able to push and be creative in solving clients’ brand problems, noting that things would have been worse if not for innovation. “One of such innovations was the school on radio and TV which was done by Eko FM and Tiwa n Tiwa FM as well as Wazobia TV. Who knew school could continue but via the screen and juke box.”
He explained: “Digital finally sat well on the right seat it belongs. Social engagement skyrocketed and this has been able to help brand custodians get real good feedback which can be worked on to improve their giving’s to the consumers.
“Traditional media took the big blow this year especially during the pandemic period. The worst to be hit by this was the OOH media. But I think I love what they did during that period; they decided to go the CSR approach in preaching the stay safe message. This was good and it speaks a lot for them. Many of opportunist agencies on the other hand took advantage of the situation by asking for freebies even in a tight condition and they did not have a choice.”
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