‘We built PR App as resource for media, marketing industries’

Black House Media’s (BHM), a young agency in the PR space, vision is to see Nigerian PR industry stand tall in the global marketing communication space. Its contribution to realise this is the development of an App that will showcase the activities of the industry and enhance the sector’s reference status in researches. Ayeni Adekunle, the agency’s CEO, told Daniel Obi it developed the App in-house as a service to the industry.

What is new coming from your firm?

We have just built the first PR App in Nigeria. It is called the BHM App and people can download it to their mobile phones. We have been working on it since the past one year. This is a platform where journalists, industry operators and students interested in marketing and PR can go to and find out news, tips and updates about what is happening in the PR industry in Nigeria. It is also a platform where clients can go to and find out which agencies they can work with. It will also host new campaigns and new trends in the industry. It is an encyclopaedia of sort of PR industry. It is available for free. It is something you can download and check from time to time on developments in the industry.

Why did you embark on this project?

We can check on sites for what is happening to agencies around the world, but where do we check for what is happening in agencies in Nigeria. For instance, which were the biggest campaigns of last year and top 10 fastest growing agencies in Nigeria and what new trends are happening in agencies in Nigeria. When we research and when we go to conferences, all they give us are examples of agencies in, for instance, London or USA. Meanwhile, there are PR agencies in Nigeria doing amazing stuffs, doing award winning campaigns and breaking grounds, but nobody is talking about them.

How can some of us not been able to tell our own stories and shape our stories. So, we thought to create the platform that can provide this kind of content from the Nigerian perspective. We should be able to read articles talking about the development of the PR industry using Nigerian agencies as case study. Now, some international companies are coming to Nigeria and we should be able to know how well they are doing and how PR is helping them to achieve their target. We wanted ours where we can call our own and where people can go and tell the story of PR industry in Nigeria.

Very beautiful App, but how do you source content?

The content is from BHM, but each agency provides its own content. If we go where we call PR agencies in Nigeria, you see a list of PR agencies in Nigerian with their contact and their addresses. Secondly, we want to commission tips and guides among others, we can call on a journalist with experience on brand and marketing reporting, to give us some tips to be a pro in business reporting. We will create content that will sit on the App and we will outsource some content, and some content will come from our activities as BHM and some will come as a result of media and research.

But all the content will tell the story of PR industry in Nigeria. We have been able to involve Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria to the extent of letting member agencies understand the importance of this. The need for a good website, populating it and access to your information to make the content available to anybody that downloads the App. The tools I will find most useful is for instance, I have a new client that does agriculture and I am looking for media to pitch to, I can go to the App and search for media in agric.

Again, if I am looking for bloggers in Nigeria, and I have told my client that I can provide 30 bloggers, I can go there and pick bloggers. For students, the tools may be reviews in different agencies.

How do you think that agencies will be honest and open on providing the content since they have this secrecy behaviour. For instance, they don’t talk about failed pitches

There is no failure in pitches, which is why we must be upfront and open about this thing. Account will always move and go. There must be winner and loser.

Why have agencies remained secretive in talking about pitches?

I don’t think they have been secretive. I think what has happened is that there has been no inside source. There has been no inside intelligence to what is happening among agencies. Secondly, if the agencies have a news field they will report it objectively that this account has moved from A to B and A has these other accounts. It is significant to monitor events in agencies.

I am a member of CIPR in the UK, and on daily basis I know what is happening, how they achieved the campaign that was successful and up to which new jobs that are lost and got, and who is moving where because they are upfront.

However, in solutions like this, BHM App will not solve all the problems, but the more we create platforms like this the more we potentially have opportunities to open the market. If we remain at the background, the Federal Government and other stakeholders will not even know we exist.

How do you balance information from agencies, some of whom want to give information to avoid taxation or information that will boost their ego?

PR is not about spin. PR people tell the truth, that is what we were taught and that is what we practice. I can assure you that the integrity we sell is far more than that and we are documenting history, and if anything happens it has happened. There is no reason to hide information. We are not telling our story enough and we have remained too conservative and we too un-seen and on the quiet side in spite of amazing stuff and difficult environment. PR is important element in marketing.