PR is my life – John Ehiguese, CEO, Mediacraft Associates
Mr. John Ehiguese is the Founder and Managing Director of Mediacraft Associates, a full-service Public Relations and Integrated Brand Communications consultancy firm operating from Lagos, Nigeria. The agency prides itself in providing bespoke Communications solutions to a discerning clientele.
Since opening shop in September, 2003, it has grown steadily to become one of the leading PR firms in Nigeria, with a staff strength of twenty (20) full-time employees by December, 2017.
Mediacraft Associates, under the leadership of Ehiguese is the exclusive Nigeria affiliate of the FleishmanHillard global PR network and a registered member of The Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN), the umbrella body of PR firms operating in Nigeria, founded in 1984. In fact, JE, as he is popularly called, is in his second term as the President of this umbrella body.
This iconic PR practitioner cum entrepreneur hit the Diamond age of 60 recently and he took time off to speak with MARKETING EDGE’s team of AMOS OLADELE, TUNDE ANIMASAUN, DANIEL ETEGHE and OGECHI ODIGBO.
Perhaps, we should request you to let us have a glimpse into your personal history – from the cradle to this point of your hitting the Diamond age?
How do you tell a 60-year old history in five minutes? Anyway, you know my name, my name is John Eboseyi Ehiguese. I am from Edo State. I had my primary education in Delta State and my secondary education at the Federal Government College, Warri, also in Delta; and then I went to work at a very tender age. I was fifteen years old when I finished secondary school and then when to work for five years at the Nigerian Ports Authority, Apapa in Lagos.
Afterwards, I enrolled at The Polytechnic Ibadan to study Mass Communication. We were the pioneer set of Mass Communication students of that institution in 1978. I graduated in 1982, served in Ogun State and then came to Lagos. I worked in different sectors – marketing, sales, advertising, broadcasting and I finally found my anchor in Public Relations through Corporate & Financial Communications, a PR firm based in Lagos. While there, I entered for my MBA at the Lagos Business School.
After two years I left C&F to set up Mediacraft Associates in September 2003.
That is the story of my life in a nutshell. I have five kids and the youngest is graduating in a couple of months from a university in Dubai and she is the only girl, the others are boys. They are all grown up now. In fact, I also have a granddaughter from my second son who lives in the US. It is a very interesting experience to be a grandfather, to witness the emergence of a new generation in your lineage, it is an incredible feeling.
How does it feel to turn 60, especially in a clime like ours?
I have been thinking about it over the past few months in the build-up to this milestone. When we were much younger, 60 years used to look so far away; you know we used to look at people who were 60 as pretty old men. I often wonder if that is the way the younger ones look at me now.
But it is a surprising thing that it just creeps up on you surreptitiously. You never really notice that you are aging. You just wake up one day and you are 60, and you say wow, where did all the years go?
I must say that there is nothing extraordinary about it except, of course, that as you get older, your body begins to slow down. The first sign for me actually was, everywhere I went I noticed that people started calling me ‘daddy’.
That was a few years ago and at first I resented it, but then I said ‘what the hell, but I’m actually a daddy after all’. So I started trying to get used to it. That is one of the early signs, when people start deferring to you as it is in our culture. You begin to notice that there are a few things about you that are changing and then, of course, like I said, your biology begins to change a little bit too.
You are no longer as physically strong as you used to be, but then you have a little bit more wisdom and you are able to counsel people a lot better because of the things that you have seen and learnt over the years – what you call ‘experience’.
But from the point of view of me as a person, I really don’t see any significant change; I am still in essence who I am, have always been. My values are still very much the same, the only difference is that as I have become more contemplative, more restrained in some of the things that I do and in how I approach things.
That is it, basically; there is nothing unusual about it, I think in a sense I agree with the saying that age is just a number. It is about how well you are able to cope with it.
Zeroing in on your foray into PR, what factors informed or influenced your career choice; and how has the journey been like?
I studied Mass Communication at The Polytechnic Ibadan and I majored in Public Relations and Advertising. In terms of the educational and theoretical foundation you could say that I was already prepared. But when I started working after graduation, I did all kinds of things. I worked in different sectors for over 20 years. Then I ended up in advertising, worked with a small advertising agency here in Lagos. Then I got an offer to work in a PR firm and I said to myself, this is something that I studied twenty something years ago, maybe it is not a bad idea to try it out professionally; so I took up the job eventually and since then, I have never looked back.
I was the first Account Director on the MTN PR account in Nigeria. I coordinated the PR support for the market roll-out of MTN in at least 20 states across the country. I went round most parts of the country launching MTN services between 2001 and 2002. So, it was a wonderful experience for me and it was also a privilege because here I was coming into the profession for the first time practically, and I got the opportunity to manage arguably the biggest PR account in Nigeria at that time.
It was a tremendous learning curve for me because I had to learn on my feet practically. The kind of bosses I had then didn’t suffer fools gladly. When they gave you an assignment they expected you to deliver, no excuses.
I remember the first time we went to launch MTN in Kaduna in late 2001. I had never been to Kaduna before in my life. So I landed in Kaduna the day before the launch. The next day we were supposed to have a press conference to which I was supposed to invite all the media in Kaduna and I didn’t know one single person in that city. I had to rely on my wits to pull it through. And I did, successfully.
That was the kind of experience that I am talking about that I had when I came into PR practically. And it was very advantageous because when I left that job two years later to start up my own firm, all of that experience came in very handy.
But back to your question, why did I choose PR? Apart from the fact that I actually majored in PR, I could easily have gone into any other IMC area, like advertising, media buying or even broadcasting, because I felt I was equipped enough. Then I looked at the landscape and asked: where are my skills best fitted? For instance, I knew that I had very good writing skills.
So where was it that I could make an impact in a short time? I was not keen on going into advertising to start competing with some of the very big boys who are well already well established in that sector. But I thought that PR was a little bit less competitive at that time; so I told myself that if I went into PR and I worked hard in a few years I could actually make an impact; and, in any case, my natural skills and talents were a good fit for a PR consultancy career.
That was how I started Mediacraft Associates in September 2003 with zero capital. I remember that all the capital I had was N100,000 which I borrowed from my wife. I already had a computer, so I bought a printer and a friend offered me a one-room office space at Oshopey Plaza on Allen Avenue, in Ikeja. So, I made a couple of tables and chairs; employed two staff and we hit the road, just like that.
At that time, I was still studying for my MBA at the Lagos Business School and I already had five kids, all of them in school. So it was a particularly tough season; but, of course, challenges have never been an issue for me. My whole life has been a testimony of scaling one challenge or the other, so it was familiar territory. I just knew that I had to find a way to make it work. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Was it a compelling situation that led you to do that?
It was, in a sense. I had left my former job and my first instinct was to look for another one. And I actually tried. I applied to several places for a job.
I will never forget a young man whom I met; may his soul rest in peace, for he died in a plane crash shortly afterwards. He was much younger than me. I told him that I was looking for a job, he asked how old I was and I said I was about 45 years old. He said, ‘bros, at your age, you should not be looking for a job. You should rather be looking to employ people. What will it take you to start your own business, because most of the people that you are going to approach for a job are younger than you? Why don’t you think about starting something on your own? You never know, it might just work out”.
It was a very sobering conversation. When I left his office, I headed straight home. I got home, sat down and I said to myself: “it is not as if I have not been self-employed before. I have the skills, I have a bit of experience, I can do this thing so what is holding me back?”
Of course, it came back to the issue of capital and I wondered how I could start this thing without much capital. I then talked to a couple of people and that I was looking for an office. First of all, I registered the company and then I started looking for an office. Mind you, I didn’t have money to rent an office; but I was looking all the same and trusting God for a miracle.
One day, I was in a friend’s office and somebody said to me, ‘you are looking for an office? I have a one-room office space at Oshopey Plaza which I hardly use. You can have it for now. I said, ‘for real, how much do you want for it?’ He said, ‘no, don’t worry about money, just go and use it’.
That was how the journey started!
Like I said earlier, I borrowed some money from my wife, made some furniture, printed stationery, printed call cards, employed two people and we hit the road. Of course, you know how it is when you are hungry and you know that there is nothing to fall back on; you just have to keep going.
We had only one small generator then and there was hardly light at the Plaza. So I would take that generator to the office in the morning, use it throughout the whole day, and then take it back home for my family to use at night. I did go through that ritual for at least nine months. I will never forget that small generator; I don’t think they make them that strong anymore.
I remember a young friend of mine, when I went and told him I had started my own practice he said: ‘welcome to the club, you should have done this a long time ago. I am going to give you your first business for you to handle PR for my company’. He was not paying much. I think it was a retainer of N200,000 per quarter, which came to about N67,500 a month. But that was a lot of money for me then because it paid the salaries of my two staff. He was actually our very first client, and I will always respect him for that. It did not last too long, we did it for about two quarters and it fizzled out, but that was a big boost and encouragement in those early, rough days.
Luckily for us by December of that year, we hit our first major business which was the campaign for the corporate change of name from Unipetrol to Oando. We handled PR for that campaign. It was a competitive pitch but, of course, I have never been scared of pitches. So we won the pitch and we got the business. It was quite a big campaign for a young, budding agency like ours, but I think that we handled it successfully. From then on one thing led to another, and more businesses started coming in.
Then in May, 2004 when we were just about nine months old, we pitched for another business and we got it again. That was the Starcomms Telephones account. It was a big account because the retainer was pretty high for our small agency. With a staff strength of about five we did phenomenal work on the Starcomms account. I can confidently tell you that between us and the advertising agency, UB-40, we built the Starcomms brand in those early years.
Would you say that there has been any metamorphosis in your career trajectory?
I can give you a round down. When I finished Youth Service in 1983, I came to Lagos and I worked in a management consultancy firm. By the way, I have never gone for an interview that I didn’t get the job. So the very first interview I went for, I got the job. It was a management consultancy firm; I was supposed to be teaching English language and Business Communication, also helping with some consultancy work. I did that for a while then I went into private business. I was trading in printing papers and boards; I did that for about ten years and at a point I became the Nigerian agent for a Norwegian paper firm. After some years I just got tired because I was not finding any fulfillment. I could not muster enough capital to trade as I would have wanted to and I just felt that I was wasting away.
I said to myself that with my education and all the things that I thought I had going for me, I deserved a lot more. So I started talking to some friends. Soon an opportunity came up to do a TV programme. I did not have any experience in television but I produced and presented the very first Telecoms programme that ran on Nigerian television. It was called ‘On the Line’ and it ran on AIT between June and December 1998 on 2:30 pm every Sunday.
When I look back now I would say that, though it could have been much better, I was nonetheless proud of my performance, given that I did not have any training at all in broadcasting. It was just an opportunity that came, AIT was new and they were looking for content. When my friends introduced me to the then General Manager, I told him: ‘Sir, I have this idea’. He said ok, let’s do it and I said when can we start? And he said whenever you are ready. That was how, with the help of my friends we just put things together; did a montage and started. We didn’t make money but it was a good experience for me.
By the end of 1998 after we had run it for six months and we were not making money, AIT had to stop the programme.
Shortly afterwards, I took up a job in an advertising agency that was owned by a friend of mine and I worked there for some time. I rose to become the Head of Client Service and while I was there, the opportunity came for a PR position and I moved. I just wanted a new experience.
How did the inspiration for the name Mediacraft Associates come, and how has its corporate journey been like?
It came out of random thoughts when I wanted to register the business. I thought that we are going into the business of crafting campaigns using the media, so that was how the idea for the name Mediacraft came and I talked to a colleague of mine who was a graphic artist and he designed a logo for me and I got a lawyer to incorporate the company.
As to when the inspiration to start Mediacraft actually came, I had been toying with it subconsciously. It was always at the back of my mind that may be some day I will come back to this, in addition to other ideas that I had.
But when I left my job is 2003, with a family to feed and school fees to pay, but no job, I said to myself: I am not a lazy person. I am not the kind of person that will just sit down and waste away and I said look, let me do something for myself. I have always been a risk taker. I recall that when I decided that I was going to start my own practice, that is Mediacraft Associates, I had a big problem with my wife. She preferred for me to get a job that would give the family some level of financial stability instead of going back into business again. She said: “You have tried it before it didn’t work out. Saying that you want to back into entrepreneurship again is like you are putting this family at risk”.
I still remember what I said to her. I said: I think this is the way to go. Let me find a way and work for myself. See these our kids that are growing up now, in a few years they will be getting ready to enter into the university. At that point I don’t think that we will be able to cope on a salary. Let me begin the struggle now, hopefully by the time they are ready we would be making enough money to give them the quality of education that we desire.’
That statement turned out to be prophetic because when the kids started getting to university age, there was no way the salary I would have been earning could have paid their bills. With the benefit of hindsight it turned out to be a good decision. But trust me, it was not easier at that time, The entrepreneurial journey is always a tough gamble, especially in this environment. But mine was even more so because like I said, I did not have any start-up capital.
How would you trace Mediacraft’s journey into affiliation and how has affiliation impacted its fortunes over the years?
Well, I had always wanted to affiliate my agency with a foreign network. I always considered it as part of the trajectory of Mediacraft that we should have at some point, seek some kind of international affiliation.
And I did make a couple of attempts in that direction. I remember that I traveled to South Africa in 2011 to make a pitch for some kind of affiliation but it didn’t work out, so I slowed down. Then I was sitting in my office sometime in 2014 when I got an email from a lady who said to me, ‘I am XYZ, I represent this global network and we would like to discuss the prospect of an affiliation’. I sent back an email to say I was interested but wondered how she got to know about us. She replied that she had attended an event in Lagos where I gave her my card. She had kept my card since then and now that they were looking for affiliate in Nigeria, she just thought that she should reach out to me, in addition to a couple of other agencies.
I said that was fine, and that was how the discussion started and at a point I had to travel to South Africa again to meet with them. In June 2015, they came to Nigeria, spent two days with us, did an of evaluation of our operations and our people and then finally selected us out of a couple of agencies that they were talking to for the affiliation contract. I must say that it has been a very interesting journey since. It has been well worth it.
Feelers from the industry indicate that in terms of affiliation Nigerian agencies often hold the short end of the stick in some instances. How have you avoided that happening to you?
I think that it is important when you go into any kind of affiliation to be very clear about what it is that you want out of the arrangement, as well as the terms of engagement. This is very important. Some people are so desperate to get affiliated that they just sign off their birthright, if you know what I mean. I was in a sense pretty prepared and I knew what I wanted.
I would say that I have probably one of the best affiliation agreements you could ever have. It is a fantastic relationship. I have no regrets; no complaints, whatsoever. I have benefitted tremendously from the relationship and when I even hear what some of my colleagues are going through, I just thank God that I don’t have that kind of an experience. We are privileged to have a very fantastic affiliation agreement, incredible partners and they don’t give us any problem at all; they give us full support and, in fact, treat us every bit like a part of their global family.
Where would you place Mediacraft Associates amongst other PR firms in Nigeria as we speak?
We are not doing too badly, but it could be better. Ordinarily, I would say that we are what you would call, by Nigerian standards, a medium-sized agency; although I do suspect that our profile has a higher market rating than that. I think that we have a strong brand in the industry but in terms of financial fortunes, we do not have any of the biggest accounts and so have not made too much money.
But I get a sense of satisfaction from knowing that we give the best to those clients that we work for and I think a testimony to that is that about 90 percent of every new business that we get is from referrals, either by the people who have heard about us or people that we have worked for before. So 9 out of 10 new businesses are referrals and I think that is a very strong indication that we are doing something right.
We were doing pretty well until the recession hit. The recession hit us pretty hard a couple of years ago. We took quite a bashing and that affected us in terms of our revenue and also our size because we were forced to downsize. We are getting back now, and as you can see, we are slowly recovering. I will say that we are a pretty highly respected operator in the industry. We are not the biggest, but then again you have to understand that in our line of business, it is difficult to determine what is actually ‘big’.
You could have one account only and be making more money than the guy that has 10 accounts. You can actually be a small agency and be making more money depending on the kind of network that you have or the kind of businesses that you handle. You can have so many accounts and not make money.
There are a lot of factors that come to play when you’re evaluating a PR agency, but I believe that Mediacraft is a strong brand in the Nigerian PR space. We have worked very hard over the past 15 years to build that brand and I think that it works for us on a number of levels.
Talking about the PR industry, it is like the weakest link in the IMC industry in this country. Why is it so?
It is ironical that we who are the ones that are supposed to project the images of others do not ourselves have a strong image. But there are a lot of factors that are responsible for this.
I think at the heart of it is a relatively weak regulatory environment. PR unfortunately in Nigeria has become an all-comers business. The level of quackery is simply unbelievable. I mean there is almost zero regulation; barriers to entry are extremely low, or practically non-existent.
That is a big issue. When you have that kind of environment; it is difficult to earn respect as a practitioner because if people don’t perceive your profession as being up there then you the practitioner cannot earn that level of respect and commensurate remuneration.
But we are doing the best that we can about the situation. As you know I am the President of Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) and we have a number of programmes that we are executing to see how we can grow the profession and the PR brand itself.
Elsewhere in the world, PR is highly regarded. In many Fortune-500 companies across the world, for example, the head of public relations occupies a vice presidential position and reports directly to the Managing Director, or President, of the corporation
That is because they understand the importance of PR in every single action that they take as an organization. What I am saying here is that we don’t appreciate the function enough in this part of the world.
I agree to an extent with you on the ‘weakest link’ tag because we should actually be leading in the IMC mix because we deal more with the core brand values, so we should play a leading role in developing the overall communications strategy.
PR deals with the image, perception and reputation and these are perhaps the strongest assets of any brand. Consumers do not patronize a business. They patronize the brand. Let’s take a brand like Toyota, for example: how many customers concern themselves with how many cars Toyota sold last year; who the CEO of Toyota international is; in how many countries Toyota operates; how many brands of Toyota cars there are and what is the profit of Toyota globally? Do you have the answers to any of these questions?
These are business questions that have no meaning to you and as a consumer. What is important to the consumer is the brand. The brand is a promise. So the Toyota brand for example, promises you a bouquet of benefits. You buy that brand because those benefits align with your expectations and desires. So, as a consumer it is the brand that you are patronizing, not the business. Things that have to do with the business are more of interest to the investors; those who own the business. As a consumer, you deal with the brand and your perception of that brand is the number one driver of choice.
A brand’s image and reputation are a part of its DNA.. These are at the core of consumer choice and patronage. And, theoretically, the more patronage you get the better your bottom line. That is the connection and ordinarily you would have expected that the people that deal with reputation, such a very important asset of the brand, should enjoy the pride of place in the IMC mix. But unfortunately, because of a number of factors, we don’t have that kind of advantage in the Nigerian market and it is unfortunate.
I hope it changes, I hope it gets better. We have done the bit that we can. My generation is phasing out and I hope the younger ones will work harder to grow the PR profession and to make it occupy its pride of place in the IMC mix.
Would you subscribe to mergers and acquisitions in the PR industry; will it solve parts of the problem?
There are fundamentally two benefits of M&As – scale and synergy. Globally , mergers and acquisitions are becoming more widespread; you want to have a bigger organization so that you can do more and you can be able to service all your clients efficiently, especially the big ones. But the situation in Nigeria is a peculiar one because it is not a matter of scale. Scale does not guarantee you the biggest businesses in this clime.
The fact that you are a big PR agency does not mean that you will get the biggest PR accounts; and if as a big agency you don’t get the big accounts, you may not be able to sustain your cost profile and that means that you cannot sustain the business.
Going into mergers and acquisitions is not a bad idea where it delivers a lot of synergy because when you are merging it is not just about scale, it is also about synergy – what is one party bringing to the table that the other doesn’t have; so that when both come together, you have some fantastic synergy that helps you serve your clients better and more efficiently? That is one level.
The other level deals with scale. As you know, scale is size and the assumption is that if you are big then you can attract the big accounts and be able to do big-ticket campaigns. You can satisfactorily service a brand like Nigerian Breweries Plc that has 22 vibrant product brands because you now have the capacity, you have the size.
But in Nigeria, it does not work like that. Scale is not necessarily an advantage in this environment. So I don’t see how mergers and acquisitions, given the situation that we are in, would necessarily be a plus for the industry.
Let’s talk about PRCAN, the umbrella association for your subsector which you have been privileged to preside over for a second consecutive term
It could be better but, of course, you can understand that the environment is challenging on so many fronts and at so many levels.
I am sure you know that the membership of PRCAN is corporate. It is for organizations, not for individuals. It is for practicing consultancy firms. Now, our members have generally suffered a rough patch recently, largely because of the recession and also because of encroachments into our business.
We have a situation that is an aberration in Nigeria where a journalist can also pretend to be a PR consultant. That is absolutely unacceptable. It is unethical; it distorts the whole of PR consultancy function and paradigm.
As PR consultants, we and the media are partners. We support them by giving them content for their platforms and we need them to provide their platforms for our clients, the brands we work for, to disseminate their messages. So it is a symbiotic relationship. But where the journalist now becomes a PR practitioner, then you have distorted the whole arrangement. It is not right and Nigeria is probably the only country in the whole world where you have that kind of anomaly going on and it seems to have been accepted as normal.
So you find a working journalist who also runs a PR agency on the side. Essentially what he is doing what is called press agentry. Press agentry is a sub-set of Media Relations which has to do with being an agent for the media; in other words just sourcing for, and distributing media releases.
This is happening because the ethnical environment in Nigeria is very weak. I have seen a practicing journalist in one of the major newspapers in Nigeria who has the title ‘Reporter/Media Consultant’ on his official call card. Can we compete fairly with that kind of person in terms of offering Media Relations services?
So, he is enjoying the best of two worlds; but it destroys the PR business. Thank God that situation is changing now largely because of the influence of social media and online platforms; but it is still a big problem in Nigeria.
Can’t this problem be solved by NIPR or PRCAN?
The ball is largely in the court of the NIPR because from an industry perspective, it is at the core of NIPR’s responsibilities to enforce ethics, as the statutory industry regulator. Although PRCAN derives its legal charter from a By-law of the NIPR, we can only engage in self-regulation, and we are doing the best we can, within the limits of the constraints we face.
We really have a weak regulatory system and it is affecting our business. Everywhere in the world, PR is growing but in Nigeria it is a different ball game altogether. The profession is not growing at the same pace when compared with other climes.
Does it then mean that outside of PR, there is nothing else that you do?
Right now, there is none. I have a new online business news website called BizWatchNigeria which I am running and which I am beginning to pay more attention to because it is the future and because I see a lot of opportunities there.BizWatchNigeria is going to take a lot more of my time, going forward.
I am also hoping now to get more involved in charity work because as you get older, you start asking yourself: ‘what I can give back to the society?. That is the phase that I am at now. God has been good to me in so many ways and I need to think of what I can begin to give back and how.
Of course, it’s not just about money. I can give my time, a bit of my skills. So I am hoping that in the next few years, I will be more into charity work, certainly be more active in the Rotary Club of which I am a member.
We would love you to give your 60th birthday message to the industry and to the nation?
To the industry, I will say that those of us that have chosen Public Relations as a profession must, as a matter of duty and responsibility, invest in perpetuating the business by making sure that the practice gets better and is sustainable and sustained beyond their generation.
It is a different thing if you are just a part-time PR person or just passing through as a survival strategy until you get the next job. To me, therefore, everybody has a responsibility to contribute his own quota to growing the profession one way or the other and I think that it is just a natural obligation that we all have. That is my message to all the PR practitioners in the industry.
With regards to Nigeria, that is a very tough one because every day I take stock of this country and I ask myself: what does the future hold?
We had a PRCAN Fireside chat in November last year to which we invited a management consultant to come and talk to us about his macro-economic forecast for Nigeria in 2018 and how it would impact our business. One significant take-away for me from that session was the revelation that he made that the median age of Nigerians today is 18 years old. The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics says that the average age of Nigerians today is actually 17.9 years.
What that means practically is that 50% of Nigerians today are 18 years and below! This scares me. Since I got that piece of information in November last year, my heart has not been at peace. What is the plan that Nigeria has for its young population, probably a quarter of whom are probably out of school anyway?
I believe very strongly that if Nigeria wants to survive she must, as a matter of the utmost urgency, develop a 50-year ‘Marshal Plan’ for this teeming young population in terms of their education, health care, employment, housing, and so on. Otherwise we are sitting on a social time bomb!
A country that does not plan for its youth is not ready for the future. My message to Nigeria and the political leadership is that every development programme that they design for this country from now on must be youth-centric.
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