Running a business in Nigeria has become more challenging – Femi Adelusi
By Felicia Nwosu
Femi Adelusi, President, Media Independent Practitioners of Nigeria (MIPAN), and Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of BrandEye/Mediaplus, a leading full-service media planning, buying and optimization agency based in Lagos, has opined that as a fall out of COVID as well as the general economic environment of the country, running and maintaining businesses in Nigeria has become more challenging.
Adding that this has put pressure and constraint on businesses, Adelusi advised that agencies need to offer the right kind of services to the client that will enable them to overcome the constraints and be able to manage their challenges better.
He pointed that this is where agencies need to strike a balance between helping to deliver and also getting the right remuneration, payment and commercial terms that allow the agencies to stay in business.
“More than any year before, I feel that this year has been a year that we can say have witnessed a lot of conversation around the commercial terms of our engagement and the value that the agencies are offering to the clients,” Adelusi stated. “Clients want agencies that understand them, their business peculiarities as well as the challenges that they face. Agencies need to be able to understand the consumer, for each of the brand they work with, of having data and access.”
He explained the need for mutual understanding between the partners as there is a high demand on both client and the agency, while noting that the demand of client on agency is much higher, even though the client also faces tough and challenging marketing situation, rising competition, exchange rate issues, disposable income factors, operational challenges in terms of importation and having access to forex, and sourcing of raw materials for production and services.”
The CEO excitedly and proudly noted that MIPAN’s major milestone in terms of achievement this year was the ability to crack the audience measurement which has lingered for a long time now in Nigeria.
“To be completely honest, our major or primary goal that we set for ourselves this year, was our helping to crack the audience measurement in Nigeria, migrating from what we currently have. Evolving and then developing the TV audience measurement for T.V gross ratings point (GRP) based planning and also the Radio Audience Measurement (RAM), for evaluating reach and frequency and all of that for TV and being able to make decisions in terms of reach and audience measurement on traditional media as well as Out of home. Also, having tools that allow you to rank sites and billboards which enable both brands and clients to choose the right and effective channels or platforms where they need to be on and have their ROI as well.
The media and planning guru explained that, today, there are thousands of contents and programmes, not only on terrestrial channels, but on streaming platforms such as free contents on YouTube, or digital contents created by individuals and all of these are fighting for attention. He stated that, the challenge to make decisions based on today’s media consumption is what MIPAN sets out to achieve this year.”
“A committee has been constituted by the federal ministry of information to look at audience measurement in Nigeria and how we can kick start that. Huge and positive progress, the regulatory body, APCON working with the federal ministry of information and of course, the key industry players from across the sectoral bodies, MIPAN, AAAN, ADVAN, and the broadcasters as well working together to see how we make the movement. For us in MIPAN, that is a huge progress, at least if we can get that off the ground, then we can begin to think about the sustainability, but we need to at least get that going,” he concluded.
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