We grew our billings by 27% in 2016 despite recession says GDM boss
…plans to expand to Kenya, Cote d’ivoire
Managing Director of GDM Direct, a foremost experiential agency in Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Afolabi, has said that his agency grew its billings by 27% to over N2billion in 2016 despite the economic recession in the country.
This is just as the front running agency has concluded plans to expand its operations beyond the shores of Nigeria into countries like Kenya and Cote d’ivore before the end of this year.
Speaking during an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE, Afolabi noted that 2016 was a period where most of the agency’s clients wanted her to do more to boost their brand building initiatives and stimulate greater demand for their products and services.
Afolabi disclosed, ”For us, it was a fantastic year, we grew by about 27, 28 percent over the previous year despite the recession because it was a period in which we were working with brands who wanted to do more because they needed to sell more, so it was more pressure for us and more money, too”.
“This year, we are not trying to do 27%, so we are projecting conservatively 18.5 percent growth forecast over last year and looking at the first quarter, we think that we are already on the right path”.
He, however, stressed that although his agency succeeded tremendously in 2016, he was shocked to know that many agencies folded up over the last 18 months due to the economic downturn in the country.
While speaking on its expansion plans for the year 2017, the GDM boss stressed that the agency had developed a three-year strategic growth plan and ambition aimed at quadrupling the business between 2017 and 2020.
According to Afolabi, ”We are trying to be in Kenya, we are already in Ghana, we did some significant activation in Ghana last year, we will do more this year, so we have a strong presence in Ghana, and we should be in Kenya and Cote d’ivoire before the end of this year. That is our geographical expansion plan but the goal, like I have shared with you, is to quadruple the business in three years”.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.