By Princewill Ekwujuru

If you have not known it, know it now, that Nigeria in the closest future will emerge Africa’s berth for robust Advertising market.
Most Ad companies world over may be shying away from the African Advertising market.

Africa, and Nigeria indeed  is the crusible of world advertising market, these where the statement of  Patrick Ehringer, DDB’s President, Middle East/Africa, (MENA), when he visited DDB Nigeria, saying  that Africa is the next area where the big companies will definitely invest more than they did some times past.

According to him, “this development is important to DDB, because some countries in the continent are   leading economies, especially Nigeria. There are lot of reasons; the resources, population and it’s position within Africa.

Ehringer believes that Nigeria would move faster into the future, because of the changes in technology, whilst he said, “I believe that the development of the mobile market will be a huge vehicle for growth in the Nigerian Ad industry. Nigeria has the potential to make things happen.”

At the same time Ehringer wants to bulk up in Nigeria, because of the volume of business in the country.

He went on to say that working in Africa sometimes proves challenging as a result of the perceptions Europeans have, with regards to political unrest, Language and Cultural differences, which can also make communication labour intensive.

In Nigeria, he said that campaigns often have to incorporate three to five languages, meaning finding sufficiently talented staff could be difficult.

The President further advised countries like Nigeria with promising economic outlook to create a distinction that would narrow down the perception of Europeans about Africa.

Ehringer advised that it is important that each country should its perception precise to make the people understand that Africa is made up of countries and regions.

Continuing, he said Nigeria as the biggest market in Africa with glaring potentials should be able to take a sizeable percentage of the African market, that is if the priorities are set right.

On the impact DDB Group has made in advertising industry in the continent, the DDB President stated that talent is key to in the Group’s business. “We have no assets in our business, we only have people the Group’s values are creativity and humanity.

Humanity just because of the way we look at the consumer and decide that behind the consumer, behind the person, what we  actually want to touch there is a human being. You need to have the proper insight in order to approach him. We consider humanity because we consider ourselves a human net work. We have people, products, performance, ownership.”

“Most of our agencies, he continued, do not have territorial exclusivity anymore.  We go where the clients are.”
He further argued saying  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 its advertising campaign. Communication today is all about talking to the customer directly.”