Nigeria’s PR practice needs PR – Yomi Badejo-Okusanya
By Kasim Bakare
Worried by the state of public relations practice and the seeming lack of professionalism, relegation among other sub-sectors of Nigeria’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) industry, foremost PR expert and GMD, CMC Connect BCW, Yomi Badejo Okusanya(YBO) has reiterated the need for PR practitioners to engage in advocacy to stem the tide of decline in the PR industry.
Making the assertion during an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, the CMC Connect boss, explained that the lack of structure in the PR industry has encouraged untrained and unprofessional individuals holding sway thereby making its practice an all-comers affair.
He said:”There is a big difference between technicality and running a business. You have probably heard in other climes that doctors are not the ones running hospitals. Some people earn BSc, MSc, Phd in hospital management and they have nothing to do with medicine, yet run hospitals. The medical doctor that is really a business person usually doesn’t practice medicine. We are not running PR in Nigeria as a business. Rather, we are running it on talents. Even the showbiz people understand it better than us. For instance, Davido, Wizkid, all have managers. The manager takes care of the business in the area of the booking and other business engagements of the artiste.
Continuing, he said:”A business should have structures. Business is like mathematics. You are going to add up the numbers to get something at the end of the day. Just like when you have I molecule of carbon and 2 molecules of oxygen, you get 2 molecules of Co2. Business is like science; it is systematic. The issue of corporate governance, succession, funding are problems that we have in the industry. Why do we have that? It is simply because a lot of us run on talents. A journalist wakes up one day and decides to run a PR firm just because he has worked in a media house before. With; No capital base, no structure, no business plan and then he begins to run all over the place carrying his briefcase in his car. Every business, whether it’s PR, hospital or whatever, must have a structure. That’s how businesses are run”.
Asked to assess the state of the PR industry in Nigeria, especially in a digital age, YBO noted that the PR agencies have had to deal with a lot of financial challenges due to reduction in PR spend by clients as a result of the digital revolution.
“Our margins are very low. The era of when we had traditional PR when clients were paying us for certain things is gone. When I started, to distribute press releases, it used to take me two days, going to different media houses. A client would pay for that because they don’t know. Right now, the client has journalists’ e-mail addresses. Then, the question would then be, why would they need to pay the PR agency to distribute press releases to journalists across the media houses? They would rather send it directly to the journalists.”
Responding to an inquiry on the apparent lethargy and un-professionalism of the PR sub-sector among other sub-sectors of the integrated marketing communication industry(IMC), YBO traced the decline of PR to several incursions by certain “professionals” into areas that were originally the purview of Public relations(PR).
“There is a big pie that used to be known as Public relations like a full cake. People have been cutting from the cake and so it’s diminishing. One day, the event planners came. In those days, event planning used to be under PR and then some guys came and said No! We are not under you, we are event planners. So, they took away a chunk from Public relations. Another group came and said they are not Public Relations but media specialists, they also got a chunk away from the cake. Today, some guys including the likes of Mr. Macaroni, Broda Shaggi, have also cut a chunk from that cake and called themselves ‘influencers’. So, PR is becoming extinct”
On how the industry can salvage the situation, YBO stated that advocacy, which he called “affirmative PR”, would go a long way to change the negative narrative and perception of PR as an “all comers affair”.
“PR practice in Nigeria needs PR. PR has not done well for itself by not advocating right. We need to advocate well. We have failed ourselves. It’s a case of “Physician, heal thyself”. We are good at delivering for others and poor at doing same for ourselves. There is something I have always said: Affirmative PR. I will cite an example to buttress that. Until Beijin 1995, people didn’t talk about women emancipation. Somebody used that event as a repositioning tool. Today, if you are putting people together and you don’t put a woman, you will be questioned or challenged. In order to make things politically right, you would have to include a woman”.
We must be deliberate in the advocacy and, say,”this is where we are going in pushing our story”. He added.
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