By Princewill Ekwujuru
Overtime, lack of adequate data has been responsible for the under-development of several economic activities on the African continent, particularly the Marketing Communication industry in Nigeria.

Today, data inadequacies for investments will become a thing of the past if the merger of TNS, an international research company with offices in various African countries, including Asia, with RMS, the biggest Nigerian research company with offices in parts of Africa came together to forge a common front to drive research in Nigeria and Africa.

Before now, Patrick Ehringer, President, DDB, Middle East/Africa, a creative agency, on courtesy visit to Nigeria, said most companies world over, may be shying away from the African market. Africa, and Nigeria indeed, he said would be the berth of world market in advertising, while saying that Africa is the next area where big companies will definitely converge to invest more than they did in Europe and America, this may be coming to fore.

According to him, “this development is important because some countries on the continent are leading economies, especially Nigeria, reasons being that its resources, population and position within Africa puts it at an advantage.
Ehringer believes that Nigeria would move faster into the future, because of the changes in technology.

“Most of our agencies,” he continued, do not have territorial exclusivity anymore. We go where the clients are,” arguing that in today’s environment most clients ask for global campaign. “So, even if a creative shop creates a piece of work, a company will still need a network to implement this campaign. There are companies that have split up their advertising campaign. Communication today is all about talking to the customer directly,” he said.

From the above, the renewed economic interest in Africa as an emerging market may have created a spring- board of hope for local brand custodians who want to be part of the global trend.

Earlier, Kim Macllwaine, CEO of TNS Africa &Middle East acknowledged the fact that a lot of global brands are finding their way into Africa.

He stated that the TNS/RMS relationship would be an opportunity for newcomers to have access to sophisticated services in the area of research.

“ As a company, what we are out to do is to help companies, social organisations and government to have access to right information. Obviously, international brands coming into the country will see us as strategic partners that would aid their success.”

Pedro Ros, Global CEO TNS, also stated that the partnership would be a symbiotic one for both companies as a result of their various backgrounds and antecedents.

His words: “We are bringing into the partnership a unique offering garnered over the years as the world’s leading research organisation. While RMS will lean on us to tap from our global network, we also find RMS understanding the African market. For the new market, we are investing in knowledge acquisition, training through our vision centres of excellence which touches such areas as customer service, brand management and business development.

Speaking, Kareem Tejumola, Chairman, TNS/RMS, said the merger by both companies followed an agreement signed in March 2010. According to him, the 51 per cent acquisition by TNS of RMS will add Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana to TNS’ existing network covering South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt and Morocco.

Corroborating Ehringer’s statement, Mr. Aggrey Maposa, CEO, TNS-RMS West Africa said the emergence of TNS-RMS will not only help Nigeria’s development, but will also help the development of Africa. Whilst stating that for a long time Africa has been in the doldrum but that lately, certain initiatives have been taken.

“The world has just woken up to realise that Africa is about 1 billion companies, and Europeans have woken up to see that returns in Africa is way higher than any investment made in other parts of the world.

Further, Maposa said unlike consumers in the developed market, consumers in Africa have better opportunity to purchase consumer products, than those in the developed world. “There is no better time than now for any company to come and invest in Africa. Any company that will come to Africa to invest, this is the right time, in terms of how the market looks, how the consumer feels and those things that make them tick, and how these interact with their cultural habit and also ways
these apply to their marketing model.”

He felt the coming together of both companies will provide new entrants the rightdirection and right kind of service required to succeed in Africa.