Creativity key in marketing communication business – Odion

Odion Aleobua is the managing director of Modion Communications, a fast growing integrated communication agency based in Lagos with top class corporate accounts. The agency was recently crowned ‘Outstanding Young PR agency of the Year’ at the 2017 edition of the Marketing Edge Brands & Advertising Excellence Awards. In this interview, Aleobua examines a number of issues including the marketing communication industry, the operating environment and agencies apathy to public sector among others. Excerpts.

Your career transition seems to be unusual. How were you able to transit smoothly without the opportunity of a formal training in a public relations company?

I think it is pretty simple. For every stage of my movement, what was required was capacity and creativity. Of course, the norm is that industry players usually move from agency to client. But for me, it has been from media to client to start an agency. The training I had from Oando Plc actually prepared me to render an agency’s work because we were one to ourselves. I learned the ropes from Head of Corporate Communication. We were brainstorming consistently. The subsidiaries of Oando Plc were our client. Customer relationship, ideation and cracking brief which form what obtained in the agency were common place in Oando. I did that for six years and excelled in it.

How would you describe the operation of your business so far?

For us, it has been two years of fantastic journey. We started at zero level, started business when Nigeria slid into recession. It was really a tough time doing business at that time. For us as SMEs or start-up, it was an opportunity because clients became open to new ideas from anybody including us. Unlike those days, when briefs were for bigger agencies, but with budget cut, they had to rely on people who could match their ideas with a budget meant for start-ups. In real terms, I will say recession actually created strong entry for us and opened doors such that where we showed up, all that was needed was to show capacity. Coming to the issue around growth, I think there is a strong embrace for PR, and creative works. With what I have seen, I don’t think that growth will stop soon. Nigeria and whole of Africa have problem of perception. So, PR stands in the best place to help businesses, nations wade through the difficulties that can assist in building reputations needed in that space.

How do you think practitioners can raise their game?

Creativity is at the heart of any communication. Story telling is at the heart of what we do. The reason  story tellers need to be grounded in their craft is that there is a different way they tell a story. There are times they have to show optics and use music in giving the right narrative. That, in its own, is creativity. You need to realise that telling the truth is not straight jacket .It is the same principle of how you sell the advertising product, or the same way you sell narrative. Take for instance, in selling a product, I have to get your attention, hold it, convince you with my message, move you with that message. All these are geared towards building equity or making purchases. Creativity is something that the human minds love. So, there is no way in any form of communication, be it advertising, PR, or whether you are tactically using social media or profiling narratives at the point of PR, or engaging stakeholders at experiential level that you don’t need creativity.

It has been observed that agencies show apathy towards public sector players as against how they embrace the private sector, what do you think is responsible?

The issue of working with public sector is that it is structured in ways that you would know that it is anathema to business. We all agreed that the greatest problem to ease of doing business is the public sector. The reason agencies are happy working with private sector is because it is almost business to business. So, it is like you are speaking the same language, they understand your challenges and understand what it takes to run a business. But with public sector, they don’t really know anything or feel the pinch that you experience. So, in dealing with them you must understand the compliance level as well as the pitfalls. Public sector has a lot of strained dynamism where policy can change overnight.

And if you are caught in policy change, you are likely to lose money. I think as a business, it is in your best interest to protect yourself and ensure that you have a tight contract when dealing with the public sector.