Marketing is the engine room of any economy but those who run Nigeria’s economy have done it a huge disservice by neglecting marketing.
National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) President/Chairman, Abdul Koledoye, recently spoke on this issue with Senior Correspondent, GODDIE OFOSE.
Pre and post-election matters in NIMN
We have changed the process of choosing leaders and we have made it more transparent. It is one of the greatest achievements of the institute that for decades change used to come with a lot of trauma. Now we ensure that those who are voting are properly accredited and no longer will the institute use staff as instruments for manipulating election.
I am only going to spend a single tenure. I will not seek a second tenure because I believe I have put in my own quota and another person should come and continue.
Prior to the election, I thought deeply if at that moment I should leave because I have been around and I have accomplished certain things, which perhaps people might be able to build upon, but it was the general opinion of my colleagues that I have to see through some of these things I have started because otherwise it will become very tricky.
We have just brought two bodies together and people are just getting used to one another; we don’t want to experience what we had in 2009 and 2010 when those who started the institute broke up again. People feared that if I were to leave that process would not have been fully completed, a lot of hurts still have to be resolved.
A lot of people are still feeling positively and negatively and I believe my own personal skill is making sure there can be reconciliation.
The academia are still outside the frame and we intend to bring them in; the institute is supposed to be a board with two wings. For several years, one wing of the institute has been so battered that we have just managed to fix.
No professional institute can survive if you don’t have the faculties who are teaching, who are going to design the curriculum and who are going to be part of the factory for turning out students. If the cohesion is not happening between the two wings then you can’t have an institute.
The practitioners are not academically inclined because they are practising practitioners. People in the academia don’t have the practical day to day knowledge but they have the skills of understanding what is going on and translating it into teaching manuals and teaching process, and if this interplay exists then the quality of our membership will be enhanced.
One of the things I intend to do is to bring the academia on board and I am now formally inviting them to attend the international conference for marketing educators, which comes up at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).
That is when we are going to sign a new creed and a permanent creed on how we are going to be working together with the academia, so that students can now participate more in the institute’s affairs.
Our long term aim is that whatever area of specialisation students are moving towards in social sciences, they should also develop marketing skills, and therefore we are now expecting a lot of people in the school of management and marketing to study professional marketing and to do that you have to bring the academia on board.
Marketing model
The second thing I intend to accomplish is that I want to make this institute to be relevant in terms of national discuss. We should have an input in whatever thing that is going on in Nigeria because everything is marketing. The truth about the society of ours is that it is being run by a purely economic model.
People talk about Gross Domestic Product (GDP), inflation, growth and all that, but a marketing model is different from that.
Marketing model looks at the quality of life of citizens. Sometimes, we call them consumers or customers. We should infuse that in all the sectors of the economy so that we can affect the lives of everybody.
We are putting our house in order so that we can get involved in the advocacy of the government’s definition of social and economic objectives and how this impacts our people. That primarily means that, even in budget preparation and reviews, the institute must have a say.
Another area I want to be relevant is in the marketing impact in the industry itself.
A lot of people who are players in the marketing industry are not necessarily members of our institute, and even those who are members do not come to our programmes. We are not that relevant in people’s careers, we have to really put a check on that.
People accuse the institute of not reaching out to its members but my own experience as someone who graduated as a professional marketer before going for my academic qualification is that members also have responsibilities on how they project their institute.
We shall encourage people to be familiar with the Act in whichever form and shape it takes to make people to understand. We will not encourage people to practise marketing if they are not members of this institute. Members mean “active players”.
Verification of true marketers
We have started a process of codification whereby if it is only 5,000 people who are members of the institute then it should be so, but let them be active members. One way to ensure this is that organisations should ensure that their marketing managers are bonafide members of the institute.
Whoever is seeking various positions; from brand management, sales management and every aspect of marketing function empowered to regulate; should be members of the institute.
We will start from January 2015 to advise people to regularise their membership and after six months we will list out the people who are really our members and to inform those who are not our members. They should not occupy positions in marketing in Nigeria if they are not marketers.
Enforcement of rules
There are two types of sanctions. We are going to use moral suasion. When I put out the list of my members and your name is not there then you are not a practising member.
We have a law which says only people recognised by the institute can practise the profession. It is our responsibility to ensure that people understand that the law exists, and if some people know and they don’t think its effective then that will do.
What we are doing is not to use the mighty arm of the police, the courts or the government; we just want to announce to the public that these are our members are not our members. That type of system works better when you name and shame than when you start harassing people.
Every marketing organisation who is a member of my organisation has the right to my service to listen to an issue and make sure we reach an amicable resolution.
We are telling people that the courts have never resolved any problem in this country, in fact they compounds it.
We will use moral suasion, we will name and shame, we will discuss and we will meet people.
NIMN, NLRC, APCON in sales promo crisis
What exactly lottery is and what consumers sales promotion is, I believe we are all very aware of it, where does the sales promotion become a lottery is in the methodology.
The last meeting I had with the commission and NECA (Nigerian Employers Consultative Association) agreed to define precisely when a sales promotion becomes a lottery.
We are still in the process of reconciling and understanding, and when we have built the frame work we will call all parties and the institute will operate within these guidelines.
NIMN is concerned that if our members are still incurring additional cost over and above the cost which they incur in sales promotion itself then you are now reducing their ability to beat their purpose, and reducing the ability for Nigeria to increase its GDP because it is based on consumption and the mover and managers of consumptions are marketers.
As for APCON, I don’t know what its Act says with regards to sales promotion; broadly NIMN is responsible for marketing in its entire ramification.
NLRC claim
We have concluded that for the issue relating to consumer sales promotion per se, the Nigerian Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) has nothing to do with it but those activities which exceed consumer sales promotion and now involves an element of lottery then the lottery commission will look into it.
Our understanding of sales promotion is simple. When you pay for your product we give you your product and in addition to that we give you incentives or discounts. There are no other strings attached but if in addition to selling your product you now say if you give me additional N5,000 you are likely to win an airplane and you collect that N5,000 from so many people in order to get an airplane then you will agree with me that you have moved away from the realm of consumers sales promotion and drifted into drawing lottery for people who are paying extra N5,000.
The persons who have gone to court to challenge the NLRC all have come round the table to say they will like to have the matter resolved out of court. The lawyers are collecting money on both sides and they are not making a headway; we all know exactly where the lines can be drawn and that is the area we are going to address.
As long as the Act that sets up the NLRC says they can manage the lottery, if you engage in lottery activities naturally you should be able to own up, but if you are not, which is majority of our members activities are not lottery, they are pure consumer sales promotions.
Relationship between NIMN and APCON
What we are positing ourselves for, because we feel there are contradictions in the legal instruments, is to be able to coordinate the activities of various subgroups. We are not going to stifle any particular group.
So I will want to see anybody who is creative to come up with institute of marketing research or anything that has to do with marketing so that marketing can become the core of the marketing profession.
We are going to tell everybody that, first and foremost, be a member of ADVAN (Advertisers Association of Nigeria), then you have to be our member. Subgroups must grow if marketing must grow.
NIMN and the future
I don’t believe the internet is destructive; it is changing the methodology and the approach. Our role as the professional body is including in our development programme opportunities for people to understand they need to acquire such skills.
Marketers don’t see it as a problem; marketing will not communicate what it is not certain of. People who are in communication will see problems as communication problems but marketing sees the multidimensional structure of every problem.
Our members need to update themselves on the latest information, processes and methodology of marketing worldwide so we see it as an opportunity to continue to upgrade the skills of our people.
Many people in the industry are not really marketing people per se. They have their own core professional areas; some are engineers, economics and all such of fields, and they hold allegiance to their professional terms.
NIMN has not created a platform for people to respect their institute. When we make people to respect their institute they will know they cannot practise without NIMN licence.
Position of marketing in economy
Exactly what transpired in 1994 is being replicated. It is not as a result of an international economic crisis. Our own problem is our own making.
Some 20 to 30 years ago we discussed how to ensure we do not rely on crude oil as our main stay, but our leaders have refused to adopt this policy that would have freed us from experiencing these difficulties.
The difficulty the situation has cut marketing budget in virtually every organisation. The marketing we do in Nigeria is of two types; we have purely imported goods and manufactured goods.
People who were bringing in five containers are now reducing them to two containers per month. That is where you begin to realise that the economy is not going to improve because we have other local issues like political transition and changes which are going to occur next year.
We have noticed that during this period the broad economy suffers while the local economy, where the elections are taking place, boom. It is up to marketers to identify where the opportunities are because a lot of funds have been released to the society.
My advice to my colleagues is that they should tighten their belts, reduce cost but continue to satisfy customers’ needs and look for opportunities in those areas where expenditure is still continuing.
I don’t know who coined stomach infrastructure but stomach infrastructure is being done through goods and hard money. Nigeria cannot be excluded from international crisis.