Recession provides growth opportunities for young agencies
Despite the obvious negative impact of the economic recession on businesses in Nigeria last year, CEO of Modion Communications, Odion Aleobua has said that the negative economic performance offered start ups in the integrated marketing communications industry the chance to make their mark in the industry.
Aleobua made the remark at a recent event organised to mark the second anniversary of his agency. Modion Communication has been able to achieve stability in a very short time because of its pro-activeness and flexible business plan.
His successes didn’t come on a platter of gold, as clients have in the last two years drastically cut down on marketing budget, yet they demand more value from agencies. So while this came as a shock to many PR agencies, leading to loss of accounts, Modion Communications took it as an opportunity for growth.
Though his agency is new, Aleobua is however not new to the dynamics of the marketing communications industry in Nigeria. Before he decided to set up Modion Communications, He was Head, Brand & Corporate Communication at Forte and before then he headed the Corporate Communications Department of Oando.
“For start up like us, it was an opportunity to take what is on the table and demonstrate our capacity. I can tell you that one of the strategies we deployed was to say don’t give us money. Let us do the job, if you like us, then employ us.
“That is what we did. We were more about, even if we don’t get business in 2016, we will demonstrate capacity in 2016 and by 2017 people will believe in us. But fortunately it worked almost immediate; people saw clearly what we could do.
The strategy indeed worked and got the young agency hooked up to major clients like Oando, Leadway Assurance, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, Rain Oil, Platform Petroleum, Propetrol and Nigerian gas Association (NGA).
And in an age where the craze for digital has become the new norm, Aleobu has refused to be carried away, he insist that while digital is important, the traditional media still plays a key role in the process of brand building and nurturing. He stresses that it is important to determine the clients’ goal first, before deciding the platform to engage.
“A lot of people are making mistake of trying to deploy engagement on digital, but the truth is that the traditional channels still offer a lot of opportunities for consumer interaction. We have been able to say we can do it almost at the same time and string together a campaign. Using both digital and traditional to tell compelling stories around the brand.
Now, as 2017 unravels, and economists make not too flattering projections on the Nigerian economy, the agency boss insist that the future remains bright, but only for agencies with superior consumer insight and deep creative instinct.
“There is going to be an attempt to recover and that means that we’ll play a role because we are the gate keeper to the consumers. In that sense we are optimistic. Creativity and consumer insight carry the day,” Aleobua said.
Modion Communications is a full spectrum brand and strategic communications consultancy with service offerings in public relations, brand development, marketing activations, media engagement, crisis communications, financial PR, investors’ relation Support, event management, digital marketing and media publishing.
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