CentrespreadFCB will be 30 years come December 2012, plans are in top gear to celebrate the day.  To examine the activities of the agency overtime,  Mr. Kola Ayanwale, Group Managing Director of the company  spoke on  issues  affecting  the  advertising industry, challenges  and its  growth.  Princewill Ekwujuru reports.

How would you describe the success trip of CentrespreadFCB?

Centrespread was established in July 1982, and we started business effectively in December of the same year. Today, the company has five other sister companies, they include: JKK, a second-line advertising agency run by Centrespread, there is FCB Redline which is a PR agency, there is Media Mull, which is a Media Independent firm, there is KontactPoint, an outdoor arm of the group, and of course, I will not forget the latest baby, and perhaps the first Visual advertising agency to be set up officially by any group; the Draft FCBInteractive.

Apart from ensuring that this brand survives, it has also given birth to five other companies over the years. Some of them bear our names, but some do not so it will not be easy to associate them with Centrespread.

We have some award winning campaigns. I remember the year that the Skye Bank ‘Yes’ campaign was adjudged the best advert campaign of the year by NTA, none of us were even there to collect the award. I remember when Telecoms News gave Multilink an award, Telecomm ad of the year; we were not there, of course, the popular ‘Saka’ Campaign for Etisalat. We are majorly behind, ‘Good Mama’ and So Klin, the brand that has doubled the turnout of Good Mama in one year.

It’s been a good journey for us; there have been ups and downs by the way. By December this company will be 30 years old, it will be 30 years of unbroken record in turbulent highly communicative industry.

Some ten years ago when Vodacom was coming to this country, and being the account of FCB in Africa, they decided to come to Nigeria. You know when you have competition in Nigeria, a few key players will emerge and the most important thing is to be among these key players.

You can find about seven or eight key players in the industry, and what we set out for ourselves is that at every point, we will be among these seven key players.

What do you think are the  problems in the industry?

Yes, a few things are still bugging this industry. The first one is talent. Advertising is a business of talent. Until Kenny Badmus, our Creative Director took a leave of absence to set up Orange Academy to train the agencies’ creative personnel; nobody has ever set up one before in the industry. It was after the school was established and took a life of its own that he came back and took his place in the company.

Again, we have to compete with our client to get a job done. You put an account executive on a job, and the client says no, put them to Corporate Affairs, no agency to the best of my knowledge, no matter how we try, can compete with the banks, and telecoms industry on the retention of talent. And yet, we are not producing enough of these talents. It is a big problem in our industry.

The other problem that we face is that of regulation. Brazil advertising is thriving now, not because they are magicians but because they are supported by their government by law, their incomes are guaranteed by law. And there are certain things you cannot do by law in Brazil. Hence in terms of power of advertising, and in terms of great work, Brazil is beginning to take over from UK, and US .

I know that APCON is working on what it calls ACAPR (APCON Committee on Advertising Practice Reform), right now. My prayer and hope is that by the time ACAPR is tried as an APCON decree, a few of our practices will be regulated better.

We all know what happened in Ghana. You cannot walk into any media house in Ghana and say  you want to place an advert, they will refer you back to the agency that created that ad. But here, it is a different kettle of fish altogether. Even the provision of APCON decree is being manipulated.

People now resort to hiring or recruiting media people and house them in their companies. If we have greater regulation in our industry, it will help immensely.  The other point that is hindering the industry is cash, enough cash to run the business with. Things are changing now, a lot of agencies are being under-funded,and they are not able to attract or do the business they have to do. One day this

group will go onto the stock Exchange. Until that begins to happen, the issue of indebtedness in the industry arising from the fact that some agencies do not have enough money to run their businesses, must be solved.

The other downside of that is that once a company goes public, by the regulation of the public quoted company, the owners of the business will ensure that the right management will be put in place to run the business.

One thing tearing the industry apart is that there are very few spenders in the industry to get to all, you find agency people fighting themselves in a manner that is uncalled for. People do a lot and say a lot particularly against successful agencies. Advertising industry is a small industry largely populated by small-minded individuals.

Can we say technology has positively impacted on advertising?

The answer is yes and no. Today you find an artist that cannot draw anymore. Today, because of the availability of materials on the net, thinking is not too deep  anymore, just plug in and you’ll get there.

But in terms of getting the job done, a job that would normally have taken you one month,  you can deliver that job, top quality, in two days. Technology has really come to our aid. So it is on the side of making our creative people lazy, that’s where I see the downside.

But in terms of operational efficiency, in terms of utilisation of time, then it’s a wonderful experience.  You know before now, if you want to write a copy, you write copy, and it goes through a lot of processes and other colleagues before it becomes ready, but now, one person, ten minutes, you do all these.

So it has been fantastic, I don’t know how we would have been able to do business without IT. And even the other side of ICT, the communication end, you sit at your desk and you are communicating with the whole of your staff everywhere in one dial. It has helped us. But for creative people, it has made them to be a bit lazy except the very good ones.

While the outdoor practitioners are crying of over-regulation in their industry, regulation is not being enforced enough on the advertising side. Are you now advocating for self-regulation?

The issue is that LASAA is not just a regulator, but also a competitor.  They actually compete with outdoor owners in the market place. It is wrong. You can never be a judge and the accuser. It is morally wrong. Number two, because of the nature of that role, sometimes they will say that road is a federal road, or that road is a state road.

But the regulation I am talking about is the one that guides the practice of advertising proper, not just the outdoor.  Whereby, you don’t create licence practitioner. You don’t recruit or appoint anybody who is not trained to do the business.

That’s number one, number two, you don’t help us, since we have lost the will to control ourselves, regulating our behaviour. In copyright issues are regulation. Somebody would have asked you to do a job, and he believes that if he had paid one thousand for an artwork, the artwork belongs to him.

It’s not true. It’s just like record of Sunny Ade or Fela, yes it is yours, but you can’t do anything.  If you want to do this business of advertising properly, let it be that of prosperity, and let it be the one that can employ people. We should look at how they do it in other places and they are prosperous. I’ll give you an example.

There was a day I went for a conference in South Africa, I was flown from Zimbabwe to South Africa with an FCB jet, how did they do it? to be able to buy two jets. They don’t buy media, media shop buys all their media.  But you don’t use their media without giving them something even when media independence has them taking out 30% or 40% from you media people.

But none out of that gain is remitted to the agency that created it. We don’t see that here. The only place we saw a thing like that is with one or two client. I remember FCMB, when they were the only one that has given this agency a percentage of the media commission they saved by booking through their leaning.

Of course that makes economic sense, I don’t have to put money to book the media.  If we continue the way we do it now, an agency because we produce a material and you pay N50,000 and you see that material everywhere.

That agency will not be able to retain their staff.  That’s the kind of regulation I am talking about. They should assist us in regulating our income and anybody that is unethical among us, sack him, put laws there that can put us in jail, so that we can save this industry.

What do you think will be the solution to the Expatriates trying to take over business here in Nigeria?

That’s where regulation comes in, and that’s where we need the Government, I mean if we are a united industry, it is time for us to sponsor people into the House of Assembly, into the Senate. And that was why some of us supported Chief Odunsi. But here in Nigeria the advertising Industry is not giving its pride of place in the economy.

Today, we have the likes of Aki and Paw Paw getting National Award, how many advertising men have ever won it, why can’t the award be given to advertising men who have performed credibly well in the industry, and to the economy.