Paucity of fund rocks experiential marketing

Seasoned experiential marketing professional and Managing Director at Exp Marketing Nigeria, Mr. Wole Olagundoye has identified paucity of funds and lack of quality personnel as some of the challenges facing experiential marketing in the country.

Olagundoye spoke with a team of Marketing Edge during a visit to his office, as he lamented the low entry barrier of personnel into the industry as a key challenge bedevilling it.

According to him, funding, lack of personnel, payment terms, low entry barrier, the perception that the industry is not fully adding value yet, simply because there is no measurement parameter in place are giving serious challenges.

He said, “It is laughable that right now anybody with laptops now call himself experiential marketing agency and that is why we are trying to sanitise the industry now.”

He explained that the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) has been mandated to create a standardised level of delivery across the industry that clients would trust EXMAN members.

On funding, Olagundoye stated that clients would only pay after the work had been delivered and that most agencies took loan from bank to prosecute the projects.

“You know that the lending rate is high now and unfriendly, so to raidse funds to prosecute a project is an issue. To get personnel who has experience is difficult and because of lack of funds we are unable to get quality ones. Those ones that we train are being poached away while clients that can pay are gradually disappearing from the market,” he said.

On low entry barrier, Olagundoye posited, “One man agency are now in the market with their laptops and what they do is get their way in as low as taking two per cent margin. You can’t compare a one-man agency to a full-fledged agency. This is one of the things we need to address to ensure that only professionals are doing this job.”