‘2015 will be a dicey year’

With slide in the international oil price, managers of the Nigerian economy have gone back to the drawing board. One thing is sure, government will likely cut spending, but Chido Nwakanma, the ex-president of Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN), in this interview with Daniel Obi, says this is the time to build brands, not time to shut down on brand building as records show that brands that remain consistent in communicating with their stakeholders during difficult times ride the difficulty faster and do exceedingly well when conditions improve. Excerpts:

You served successfully as PRCAN president. What are those landmark achievements?

The PRCAN team 2012-14, under my leadership built a bigger and better PRCAN brand in line with my campaign platform of Bigger and Better PRCAN. We enhanced the equity of the PRCAN brand such that no one in marketing communication and general business would claim not to know it as was the case in the past. We achieved three things for PRCAN, Higher TOMA, Better name recognition and Better understanding and appreciation of the existence of PRCAN as a body of agencies rendering service.

We built brand equity through advocacy, through deliberate brand building campaigns and through proactive intervention in public discourse. We also ensured public relations relevance in discourse on business of integrated communication.

If you were given more time as president, what are those programmes you would have loved to pursue?

The issue of more time does not arise. I had the option of going for another two years. However, it is not how long but how well. It is also a professional association and there is need to establish traditions. PRCAN now has momentum. So the infusion of fresh blood at regular intervals is good for the association. New leadership, fresh ideas and momentum.

What were those issues that gave you headache during your tenure?

A key challenge for our association is getting members to commit fully. It is taking a while for members to see the benefits of coming together and working collaboratively to increase the reputation quotient of the association and the industry as a whole.

However, engagement is growing. We grew membership from 35 to 50 over the two year period. I expect that with the momentum, the new team would do more.

Basically, what are the objectives of PRCAN as a sub group of NIPR?

The principal objective of PRCAN is to aggregate and articulate the interests of members who are consulting firms offering public relations as a service. We have defined those interests as securing competitive fees for our services, gaining preferment with clients and internally establishing performance and service benchmarks that define membership of PRCAN as a badge of service excellence. We are saying to clients that if you need a public relations agency, look for a PRCAN member. You would get professional service, and you would also be complying with Nigerian Law (Bye Law 3 of NIPR Act 16 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria) that recognises the necessity for regulation.

No Nigerian agency would likely make the top 200 PR agencies in the world. As former PRCAN president what would you attribute to this?

I do not see making a list of top 200 or even Top 1000 agencies in the world as important for us now. In the first place, we do not have an economy deep enough to yield such numbers. Remember, it is about fee income. Second, we face more fundamental challenges of getting stakeholders, particularly in government to appreciate the need for strategic communication such as offered by PRCAN member agencies. We also need to institute agreed standards of performance all through, from our training institutions all the way to practice. When we have sorted these issues out, we can then pay attention to such lists.

Nigerians have gotten obsessed with lists. My view is that you should build your house from foundation and then worry latter about the external landscaping. In other words, we need to deepen our acceptance as well as service offering in line with the growth of the economy.

Pitching fee is still an issue in the IMC industry.  How do you think this can be addressed?

Pitching fee has arisen because of the tendency of clients to call as many as five and up to 10 agencies to bid for a job. The process of bidding is expensive. You deploy all your resources to tackle the brief as if it is an actual job. PRCAN is working out a structure for that purpose now. How to address it? Agree on minimum standards. Behave as gentleman and abide by the agreement on both sides of the table, but more so on agency side. If we do so, clients would be more specific in their search and thus reduce the need for beauty contests or prepare to pay for the parade.

Do you think that the slide in international oil price and government intentions to cut spending will affect Nigerian IMC activity?

Reflex actions would dictate that this would happen. We advise companies however to be contrarian. This is the time to build brands, not time to shut down on brand building. Records show that brands that remain consistent in communicating with their stakeholders during difficult times ride the difficulty faster and do exceedingly well when conditions improve. So, yes, it would most likely affect IMC but for a few enlightened firms who would know that you do not cut your nose to spite your face.

How would you describe IMC/PR business in the outgoing year 2014?

It remained good on the

corporate side. If you check the “See the company we keep” ad that I mentioned, you would see that PRCAN member agencies continue to be appreciated by Corporate Nigeria. The problem is with political and institutional communication. We carried out a survey of member agencies that showed that government business is still not coming to structured communication agencies. One of the fallouts is the fact of greater dissonance in messaging by governments across all levels as well as the lack of clarity and effectiveness. Government still operates in the Information Dissemination era rather than the Communication era. There were some account movements. We need to grow structured business communication beyond the established firms/brands and help the SME sector who still do not understand the imperative or where they understand shy away because of wrong notions about the cost. We say to such firms to take advantage of the credibility, flexibility and cost effectiveness of public relations. Public relations is the discipline that does audience-specific messaging.

What would be your projections for 2015, and what factors would shape it?

Dicey year. Too many factors pointing to the negative. However, our industry must remain focused on the long term in building our brand equity and showing relevance to the needs of organisations, institutions and governments. Political communication should come to the fore. If as feared, governments would have less revenue, there would be need to communicate better, as citizens would hold them accountable. There would be an initial downturn but I expect that as stakeholders on client side see the imperative (yes, imperative) for strategic communication, public relations would benefit. Public relations has the tools to deliver in these situations and is the most suitable for the cost-effective communication interventions needed to reach specific stakeholders and targets while minimising the dissipation and waste in mass messaging.