Nigerian PR firms should gear up for global competition - Coo, Quadrant
Bolaji Okusaga Bolaji Okusaga is the lead Consultant and Chief Operating Officer of The Quadrant Company, one of the biggest Public Relations company in the country. In this interview with Sulaimon Olanrewaju, the 1995 Dramatic Arts graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University speaks on front burner issues in Public Relations. Excerpts.
What is the most important thing in public
relations?
The most important thing in Public Relations (PR) is that you get your message across to your target market or target public. That is the most important thing because what PR does is to create a platform that enables furtherance of individual or corporate objectives. It is beyond just getting information across. You can get information across and still cause a crisis which might act as a hindrance to the attainment of your end. PR essentially, serves for mutual exchange in the process of managing stakeholders’ expectations because every organisation or society has a need to target specific stakeholders that have influence, authority or power over certain things that have to do with the progress, well being, consciousness of that organisation or individual or community. What PR tries to do is to tie the loose ends between what the expectations are and what the results are.
How is the practice in Nigeria?
The practice right now in terms of value is perceived very low. The reason is not far-fetched given the fact that the profession got recognition by the law less than 20 years ago. It follows then that though PR is far much older than 20 years, we still have a long way to go. Unlike what you find in the medical, legal or accounting profession where the barriers of entry into these professions are high, you find one ex-journalist or lawyer set up a shop and starts practicing. Again, what are the practitioners themselves doing in terms of global best practices? Are we really aligned? Are we really up to date? When one looks at all these, one sees that we are still far behind. In advance countries, PR is not as it is practiced here. Overseas, you have people who are basic investor relation people, we have people who are basic human relations people, people who are pure media relations people, people who are experts in the area of political communication and people who are also experts in digital communication because we are in the new media age. But here, what you find is that everybody is still a generalist. It is not that you don’t have generalists abroad but what they do is that they group some of these special areas into portfolios that people become experts in their own portfolios. For instance, someone who has an understanding of business to business communication is different from a man who is basically plying a business to consumer trade because the language is different. But what you find in Nigeria is that a man sets up shop and he does everything, all the briefs come to his table, no touch of expertise in the way the thing is done. To that extent, you don’t expect the market to take you too seriously and if they don’t take you too seriously, you don’t expect them to rate you value-wise in high quarters.
What is the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations doing about regulating the practice in the country?
Of course, there is a law in place which creates some barriers of entry, but how enforceable are these laws? For instance, the NIPR will say always tell you not to have anybody in the communications capacity except that person is an associate of NIPR. But what you now find is that organizations try to round that by changing designations though the job descriptions do not change. Until we get to that point where the value is seen as being high in terms of perceived use value, the laws will not be enforceable.
What you find NIPR doing now is to woo people who are in communication functions within organisations to come and join the fold. If you open the door to everybody, your barrier will be low. What that means is that everybody will come in whether they have the stuff or not and that is a big problem.
Secondly, the issue of politics within the NIPR itself is a problem. Once you do not have a clear line of succession that is rigid and regimented, what you find is that a lot of people will join the institute for reasons that are beyond professionalism. What that does to the profession is that it kills it because people will now be inclined to look at office and the spoil of office rather than the development of the profession itself. Having said that, however, every institute passes through this stage. Let me add that maybe by the time the institute is much older, the values of the profession will be raised. As we enforce the enabling Act, things will generally get better.
What is the input of PR into the nation’s economy?
I once told someone that we haven’t got anywhere until we can isolate PR from the service sector and say that we account for up to five per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Right now one cannot place one’s finger on the percentage of PR’s contribution because it is pretty low and infinitesimal. If you ask yourself who are the players, you will find out that there are less than five major players. How much can the contribution be? How is the macro service sector even perceived? PR has not realised its potentials. We are now becoming more of a service-oriented economy. With telecoms companies opening call centres and banks opening call centres and people wanting to relate with their publics, how many PR companies have capacity for customer relations. We now have a number of banks going offshore to raise capital, how many PR firms have the capacity to offer top notch, made to measure investor-relations solutions? These are technical. We now have issues of litigation including government and interest groups against big multinationals, how many PR firms do we have in this country that can manage litigation communication? We have a situation where there are quacks in the public relations sector. How many PR companies can hold their own and say we have a portfolio about political communication? Until we are able to get to that position, the contribution to the economy will remain minimal.
Foreign companies are now coming into the country to establish PR outfits, does this portends any danger to the local practitioners?
The truth of the matter is that we cannot play the ostrich anymore if truly we want to live in a globalised world. Needless to state that at this point, any PR that worth its salt and wants to go into the future must, beyond having an understanding of the local environment, must also have a global perspective . We have done work for clients in Ghana, we have done work for clients in Cameroon. We also give briefs to our affiliates to work for us in other places depending on the nature of the brief we get in our local environment. If the answer is that we cannot remain local it follows that in all honesty we must open ourselves up for competition on a wider scale.
What is your vision for Quadrant?
People always ask me my vision for Quadrant but the issue is, if I don’t know where I am going, then, why am I here? As much as we are a product of our past, we should be able to define our future. Therefore, since one is coming to an environment like Quadrant that is already rich in tradition, one is not coming to set up something new. What one can do is to find out what are those things that are germane in today’s world that were not germane as at the time Quadrant was set up.
The digital platform was not quite established as at the time Quadrant was established, today it is so pervasive. So, one is hoping, and we are working hard at setting up a digital communications arm. We also plan to have an investor relation arm with two technical partners. We are also working at creative services because we find out that to speak the language of the 21st century, you’ve got to be graphic with communications. So, we can no longer sit on our high horses and do media relations or events in the traditional way we have always done them.
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NSL unveils ETF terminals
Sola Fadare, Lagos
The National
Sports Lottery Plc
(NSL), as a way of improving technology-driven business operations in the country, has rolled out 20,000 terminals to develop and operate a world class transaction and payment processing network, which will deliver Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) and transaction processing services to financial institutions, mobile phone operators, utility/cable companies and government agencies.
Speaking to journalists in Lagos, Executive Vice Chairman, NSL, Mr. Odunlami Akin Daisi, said the company had identified the need for alternative payment and transaction processing solution which have been the yearnings of consumers and the business community in Nigeria and therefore poised to deliver these services in the six goe-political regions of the country.
Akin Daisi said further that the i8550 terminal which has been on display at the Silverbird Galleria in Victoria Island, Lagos would be taken to major locations in the country to open doors of employment for about 400 young Nigerians, who would be engaged to sell scratch card for only N50 through which buyers of such cards would have opportunity of wining various amount, ranging from N1, 000 to N1, 000,000.
As a way of creating exciting moments for lovers of fun during the Easter season, fun seekers of different ages beseeched the Galleria in the heart of Lagos Island to buy the scratch cards and participate in “one love promo” of the company.
The promo, according to Funke Kuti, the Group Head, Corporate Social Responsibility and Reputation Management, NSL, is “aimed at uniting the nation because the National Sports Lottery believes in the unity of our great country.
Nigeria NSL is giving out lots of fantastic prizes which include 40 Toyota Yaris cars, 370 Motorcycles, 999 DSTV sets plus subscription free”.
She added that the potential winner would only need to buy N50 promo ticket from any of its retailers or vendors and fill in the necessary information and be waiting for the draw to be held at Eagle Square Abuja later, saying “for fairness and to ensure that each state of the federation benefits form the promo, the prizes have been shared among all the states of the federation including Abuja, but as we know Lagos as the hub of lottery activity will be getting a fairer share.
The company went to capital market recently and is currently has capital base of N90bn with the objective of bringing in 30,000 more ingenico terminals by December this year.
The NSL VP said the company would provide among others, GSM recharge services, Points Of Sales (POS) terminal driving, salary card services to federal and state government agencies, electronic bill payment services to cable companies and point of sales based solutions to restaurants, petrol stations, immigration services, the police and the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC).
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