Relationship, collaboration key to accelerate growth of advertising – Medebem
By Felicia Nwosu
Experiential marketing Amazon, Tolulope Medebem, the Chief Executive Officer of Aster Integrated Marketing, and Vice President of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN), has posited that relationships and collaborations are major key elements to accelerate the growth of advertising industry. The agency boss, who emphasised the need for agency owners to nurture good relationships with clients while promoting industry collaborations, noted that “technology does not run a business, but good relationships do”.
The EXMAN VP stated this in a close chat with MARKETING EDGE. Sharing her experience on how she benefited immensely from business opportunities that were birthed out of sustained good relationship during the peak of the pandemic, she said: “I can say that one of the things that has kept us in business so far during the pandemic and even presently, is relationships. All through the period, those that kept working with us were actually those clients that we have relationship with, and strangely this year, based on words of mouth and relationships, we got a couple of new clients as well.”
Mrs. Medebem urged agencies to embrace collaborations to achieve a 360 degree growth of the industry, a success which she added, will be ploughed back to the entire growth of advertising industry.
“We all need to come together to find ways that we can cooperate to ensure that we all grow, because at the end of the day, if somebody holds unto everything and thinks he or she will grow alone, somewhere along the line, it is going to affect not only the person but everyone else. But if we collaborate with healthy competitions, of course, working together also means that we are putting back into the ecosystem. From there we will be able to grow, not just on personal businesses but the industry and the country as a whole.”
The Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants while assessing the experiential marketing within the marketing communications ecosystem, reaffirmed the fact that experiential is growing and evolving despite the direct hit of Covid-19 on the industry, due to the nature of its operations and activities. She stated that experiential, despite being under-explored, has the capacity to contribute exponentially to the growth of the IMC ecosystem in terms of activities and budgets. The Amazon reiterated that technology is integral to experiential and therefore urged industry players to access every innovation for its function. She called on the practitioners to move in line with time and trends so as to be at par with other counterparts around the globe.
“The truth about being in a global world is that whatever is happening internationally, we should continually keep tabs here. Obviously, we need to tap into whatever is going on in the world. Ideally, every activity in experiential marketing is supported by technology. There is need for technology amplification and integration.”
Mrs. Medebem encouraged agencies to ensure value addition in their dealings with clients in order to remain relevant and indispensable in the industry. She advised them to move from the point of agency-client relationship to partnership point in order to enjoy a symbiotic relationship.
The business founder expressed her joy and excitement towards Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) for instituting the long awaited Advertising Industry Standard of Practice (AISOP) which took effect from the 6th of October, 2021, as a legal framework and new guideline for all advertising practitioners.
“With AISOP, EXMAN is now well positioned as an industry player under APCON. As a member of EXMAN, Aster Integrated Marketing can boldly practice experiential marketing as covered by APCON.”
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