The contribution of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises,SMEs is vital to any country, lack of access to relative cheap and effective source of finance for SMEs is the major factors hindering their contribution to economic growth. In this chat,  Chude Jideonwo  spoke on the integrated Marketing communications, IMC, industry and related issues.  Princewill Ekwujuru  reports.

PR and economic downturn:

I don’t ever see any possible scenario where Public Relation, PR, as an industry suffers for lack of resources, this is the reason, advertising is a very regimentated field it is very clear in what advertising is, they produce, they design the copy, they do the media buying, the lines are very clear, there has to be a limit to budget for that.

PR,  however,   is different because it is endless, so everything is clear, the branded events that corporates do is PR, the small meetings that high level PR managers schedule between CEOs of organisations   and industry influencers is PR, a part of it that focus on government relations is PR, a part of it that focuses on corporate social responsibility, CSR, with a view to driving the perception of the company is PR.

So PR involves so many endless different things that helps companies engage with their publics, therefore as long as companies are in operation and are doing business, as long as there they try to engage different segments, and advertising try to engage buyers, mostly customers, the PR try to engage everyone else, government, NGOs, activists, advocates, regulators   and international media, they tend to relate with everybody.

Therefore once the business is in operation, budget for PR is impossible and practically not going to stop. I said that because I have done media relations at Virgin Nigeria, I worked in corporate communications  of Nigeria LNG, I understand how this budgets are planned. As long as there are series of activities that companies want to use to engage or except the entire economy shuts down, which means there is absolutely no cash flow, no income, or the GDP of the company drops or the economy stands still or there is a war or there is a catachrestic event   and once that happens it is only difficult for the thong and pull of economic   uncertainty to effect PR spend.

Recession in Nigeria

Nigeria didn’t suffer recession in 2005, In Nigeria we heard about it, nothing real changed, some    banks collapsed, government redeemed them.   Government gave them subventions, so Nigeria really has had government cushion the effect of recessions over the years, even in America. In Europe  where it actually affected, when you observe the trend lines between 2005 to 2015, the impact on PR spending was very minimal.

The first challenge is the difficulty in defining PR spend. Are we talking about media relations spend, government relations spend, what spend are you talking about?. What usually happens is that when economic recession occur the nature of the PR spend changes, people begin to invest more, people are no longer investing more direct media relations, more are investing more in investor relations,  more are investing more in shareholder engagement,   people are   investing more with stock exchanges, these relations change, so the more money moves but it’s still locked in the body of PR.

That was what was America saw, that was part of what Europe saw   with the focus on France, the UK, spending moved, moved within the orbit of PR.   So when you take that global reality, bring it into a basically socialist country like Nigeria, where government intervenes every time, everybody is looking government intervention, farmers are looking for government intervention, people that are selling coffee are looking for government intervention, everybody who owns business is looking for government intervention as a way of fund, when you take that and apply in Nigeria then it’s even better, because in Nigeria it’s very difficult.

It’s almost impossible it really hasn’t happen, even directly to our business, it hasn’t happened that you see drop in PR spend simply because there is a recession, even last year November people were about how the economy was on a standstill, because Buhari has just won, what kind of policy is he going to pursue, who going to be the minister of finance. I have not seen drop in PR spend.

I saw companies demanding more. I see people stream lining for course efficiency, but I saw all those monies going to agencies that know what they are doing .