Managing Director, EXP Marketing, Wole Olagundoye

We will definitely become more potent than traditional media- Managing Director, Exp Marketing, Wole Olagundoye

Passionate about the experiential marketing industry, Wole Olagundoye bares his mind on EXMAN’s role in building a strong association that will drive professionalism. In his Lagos office, he shares with KEHINDE OLESIN challenges, good moments and why EXP is in full stride…

Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) is about a year already. Is there any impact yet?

For every emerging group there has to be a period where it has to dig in and stabilize itself. That is what EXMAN is going through now. We came in to full operation as an association last year and we are going to be one year in July. It has been a challenging but successful journey so far. We have been able to engage and get on board experiential marketing agencies in Nigeria, at least the major ones who are actually practicing. We have just recently launched our Code of Conduct and exposed it to the industry including all the other sectorial bodies in the integrated marketing communications space. The next thing that we want to do is strategically engage with other stakeholders in the industry so they begin to understand the essence of EXMAN and what we stand for.

EXMAN has quite some grounds to cover and issues to tackle because of all the professional bodies in the marketing space in Nigeria, we are actually the last. All the others are many years ahead of us, so we have to catch up and very quickly too. But in order to effectively do what it has to do, some more engagement and alignment is necessary and that is what EXMAN is currently working to achieve.

It’s very clear to me that EXMAN would play a very pivotal role in sanitizing the experiential marketing industry and most definitely take it to its pride of place in the marketing space. The good thing is that we have plethora of experiential agencies in the market now, which would suggest that the industry is alive and there’s real business being done. However, going by recent developments, it is obvious that experiential marketing is fast gaining prominence and relevance, as brand managers hardly do a marketing plan without an experiential marketing component in it. And clients seeing their budgets increasingly being allocated to experiential have begun to find ways of cutting the revenue of agencies.

A platform that is delivering value for client must get equal value back in return. There is virtually no serious FMCG brands, telecom brands even banking brands, as conservative as they are, that does not use experiential to connect to their consumer and thereby drive up their sales. These experiential ideas don’t just come from the air, they are rigorously thought through using, as in the case of Exp, time tested processes and tools. The truth is, for a cerebral discipline like experiential, if there’s no deliberate drive for industry cohesion we would be taken advantage of, as we see happening now. EXMAN’s role therefore is to drive for industry cohesion, ensure industry standardization, ensure appropriate remuneration, raise the level of professionalism and basically sanitize the experiential marketing Industry.

Before the arrival of EXMAN, it was largely believed that the sector was bereft of adequate professionals. How far is this true?

We need to make this clear, the industry as it stands today is more professional than it was some years ago. Prior to EXMAN, we had frontline agencies that major clients went to, we also had briefcase agencies some of which were run by half-baked persons and who for several reasons primarily due to the economic challenge of our society, and the self-indulgence of some brand managers who connive with them to get business out of their respective companies for their own personal gain. What you find in that kind of arrangement is that the brand manager will do all the work, to cover up, because the so-called agency can’t deliver. So to that extent there has been this encouragement of quacks as there is little or no barrier to entry into the industry. We at EXMAN have begun putting some professional barriers in place to raise the standard of the industry and ensure that true players are the ones that we will allow to practice.

Any plan for a training school yet?

As a matter of fact we have started doing that. Recently we had training in Lagos for industry practitioners and that is going to continue. Training is definitely very important to EXMAN’S drive because we believe we don’t have enough trained operators and it is our responsibility to train talent adequately and properly so that member agencies can benefit from such train.

Can you assess the general status of the industry in Nigeria especially when compared with what we have in developed climes?

I think one of the major challenges that we have is that of measurement, not being able to measure and track the effectiveness of our activities. That would be the major difference compared with other climes. But everything that I have seen in the last couple of years is pushing towards attaining excellence. The moment we are able resolve our measurement issues, we will definitely become more potent than traditional media.

Also, we have a data management challenge in our market, we do not keep record well here and the little data that exist is either incorrect or outdated. The truth is that we are striving everyday to get to develop numerous tools for various activations to measure the impact of what we are doing and also know what value has been added to clients businesses. Right now clients are playing down the impact of our experiential activations, so we need to get measurement and data management sorted out so can begin to measure the value of the impact of experiential across board.

What recorded value of the experiential spend do we have so far?

While we have measurement indices for ATL in terms of spend we don’t have any clear one for BTL. We have sort of gone with the rule of thumb that companies spend 60 percent of their marketing budget on ATL and 40 percent on BTL. If we go with that spend trend and we take the recorded media spend 2013, which was N125billion, then the 40 percent will be around N50 billion.

How do you tackle a brief here at EXP?

We have a process that we distil briefs through in our system. This ideation process allows for us to be able ignite the most effective ideas, interrogate these ideas against client’s objectives while having a clear view of the consumer insight and needs, in order for us to be able to respond to client with very effective experiential solutions.

What are the values of the company and what are those strategies that give you a cutting edge?

Our edge is the sixth sense marketing tool. It is a tool that we use to arrive at that impactful, effective idea. We use it to distil through ideas, from the objectives of a client to the insights from the consumer through to getting to the most effective experiential solution. This is what we use to drive our pitches and presentations. The major drive for EXP is to ensure that experiential marketing becomes entrenched in the marketing dictionary of all our marketers in Nigeria. Exp has been fortunate to be a front leader in this space.

Can you evaluate the landmark achievements of the company since inception?

EXP has helped build the experiential marketing industry in Nigeria; most of the players have walked through Exp at one point or the other. We are the frontline leader in experiential marketing in Nigeria. We were very instrumental into the creation of EXMAN.

What are those hitches that affect your operations and the solutions you think can make the work smooth?

Nigeria is a very challenging place to work in. Power is a major source of worry; we have to carry power to everywhere we go .Arbitrary regulation is also a big challenge for us, paying multiple levies to government and agencies is also a challenge. It will be good to have one payment point for such governmental fees/levies/taxes. Also the issue of quacks and half-baked professionals are poising a serious challenge and hitch right and EXMAN must step and sanitize the industry.

What interests you most about experiential marketing?

The fact that there is no telling what can be done, the sky is simply not the limit when it comes to experiential marketing, that interests me a great deal. There is always something new to be done. Even if you get the same brief you would respond to it differently because time changes, trends change and things move on. There is always be something new that challenges us to think out of the box. This is what gives me a kick.

What are those good moments you have had on this job?

For me it is conceptualizing and bringing an idea to life. Seeing the idea grow from the slides of a presentation into an activation in the field, and seeing that idea flawlessly executed. Everything about experiential gives me thrills.

What is your style in leading like?

Open and simple.

Describe yourself in three words?

Driven, analytic and engaging.

Source:marketingworldmag