Why many Advertising Agencies went under – Muyiwa Kayode

Mr. Muyiwa Kayode is the CEO of USP Brand Management and author of The Seven Dimensions of Branding. In this interview with Mike Bamigbola, the DAILY TIMES’ Brand Times anchor, he dissects the essence of advertising and brand management in relation to brand marketing.

Your company is positioned as Nigeria’s premier brand management consulting firm. Can you tell us how brand consulting started in Nigeria.

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What happened was that we started out as an advertising agency. But, a couple of years down the line, we realized that the traditional way of operating an advertising agency was no longer viable, going forward. What we mean by that was that the industry was becoming fragmented and different aspects of what would normally have been handled by a full service advertising agency were becoming specific areas of specialization on their own. So, you had companies setting up PR firms; you had companies setting up media firms; you had companies setting up event firms.

Prior to that time, an advertising agency that was well structured and well-staffed would have all those things, and more. That was the way advertising service was configured at the time and that made it difficult to create lasting values for clients. So, we had a situation where a whole lot of things might be wrong with a product while the clients kept pumping money into advertising. Meanwhile, advertising wasn’t going to solve those problems.

So, we had situations like this with several clients and we realized that we needed to help our clients beyond advertising. We needed to help them create brand strategy. We needed to help them develop corporate identity. We needed to help them take a more strategic approach to marketing in a way that their advertising would be more effective.

For example, if you don’t have a strong value proposition, no matter how much advertising you do, that product is not going to be a success. So, that was how we re-positioned and re-defined the industry in such a way that we said okay, advertising is fine, but it wasn’t going to solve the problems we wanted to solve for our clients, and that was how we went back to the drawing board, went through a whole lot of training locally and internationally, and re-launched our campaign as a premier brand management consultancy in Nigeria. That was in 2003.

At that time, there were no brand management consultancy in Nigeria, only advertising agencies, and when we started pushing the difference between the two, we met with a lot of resistance. A lot of people didn’t understand what we were talking about. Now, everybody knows the difference and even beyond that everybody is trying to position as brand consultants and brand strategists.

At least, the industry now knows the difference and we have also been vindicated in the sense that a lot of advertising agencies have gone down between then and now and that is because of the way advertising agency business was structured. It was just not going to survive for too long.  And it is not just a Nigerian thing. It is a global thing. Technology has taken over a lot of the functions and advertising has become so common place now that a lot of companies don’t need to engage an agency to do their advertising. So, it’s no longer such a big deal to be an advertising agency.

When you say a lot of people now know the difference between branding and advertising, what exactly is the difference?   

The difference between the two, and I’ve been asked this question so many times…advertising is what you say, while branding is what you do. I like to simplify things without speaking too much big English. In terms of developing your product, creating a brand, there are certain things you need to do. When you have done those things, you can now advertise by way of telling the world what you have to offer. When you say what you do, and do what you say, you succeed.  It’s as simple as that.

Does branding pack advertising also, because once you have done what needs to be done, you still need to communicate it? In other words, at what point does branding stop, and advertising takes over?

Brand communication, or if you like, advertising, is one of the tools that you deploy in the process of managing your brand. And advertising is also in itself broad, because given the digitization of media, and all of that, people have more options now, unlike before when most of the advertising you had to do was on TV, radio, bill-board, etc. There are so many options now. That’s why we don’t call it advertising, we call it brand communication because there are even some companies that are not allowed to advertise but they can still communicate the benefits of the brand, without necessarily advertising because the law, or their professional regulation, does not allow it.

Like medicine?

Yeah…So, it goes beyond advertising.

You mentioned the resistance, the skepticism in the industry when you started out to launch into brand management as different from advertising. How did you weather the storm?

We were just stubborn. It was difficult. It led to a down-turn in business. But we believed in what we were doing. We believed that that was the future and at the end of the day we were vindicated. And when people began to see what we were doing, we started earning the respect that we rightly deserved.