The Chief Executive Officer, LT & C Advertising, Mr. Charles Abraham, in this interview with DAYO OKETOLA decries the annual loss of advertising industry revenue to capital flight
When you started your advertising agency 25 years ago, did you know it would go this far?
Though we started out as a small company with less than 250,000 share capital, if I said we knew we were going to go this far, I would not be truthful. We had a clear understanding that we wanted to build an institution that would outlast us but none of us could have imagined what had happened to us in the last 25 years.
But I am struggling with some aspects of the industry such as the quality of manpower. I have found out that one of the areas where I had the biggest trouble was finding the right people to do the job. So if we are going to raise the advertising industry in Nigeria, manpower deficiency must be addressed.
What will you do to transform the industry if you are given the opportunity?
Apart from the things that Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria is doing right now, which I totally subscribe to, I would also spend a lot of time and energy developing manpower. I would establish institutions that will train people properly. I would benchmark against global institutions so that we can actually produce the kind of people that can work anywhere in the world.
Are you satisfied that major advertising production jobs are still being done outside the country?
It grieves my heart and my spirit so much when I see advertising productions such as TV commercials being done outside the country. I consider it as a travesty and I could go as far as saying it is a misplacement of priorities because Nigeria has the talents to produce the works they need to produce.
But you complained about manpower earlier. How do you reconcile the two positions?
Yes, but that doesn't mean that we cannot produce quality work. The issue with production abroad is that most of the time, it has got nothing to do with the content of the script but with facilities. It is like post production things, which we are also beginning to develop in our nation.
So, as far as I am concerned, I don't believe foreigners can run adverts for Nigerians. I don't. It would take a very special advertising expert to come into Nigeria and write better adverts than Nigerian people. He would have to be a creative person and a genius to understand our local nuances; the way we relate with one another, and the way we speak with one another. He would have to go through a lot of immersion.
Do you have an idea of what the country loses to capital flight as a result of advertising productions being done abroad?
I don't have the exact figure. I would only say we should be looking at 40 per cent of our annual revenue going outside.
Does government have any role in stopping this capital flight?
I believe government has a responsibility to protect all the industries in this country, advertising not being an exception. I believe the government through APCON, has taken up the responsibility of protecting this industry and I think APCON's reforms are far reaching and groundbreaking. And if we honestly uphold and implement the APCON reform, our industry would improve and move forward significantly. There are people who believe if we regulate and restrict the practice of advertising industry in Nigeria by not allowing foreigners to come in and practise here, our standards will drop. I don't believe, that because in Brazil, they regulated and the industry went from being just a mediocre industry to one of the best in the world. The same thing happened in Australia and Turkey. So there are examples all over the world about how people have regulated and have changed the industry. South Africa was contemplating it before we came up with our own. So I think we need to do that.
Creativity is always something that has to do with the local people and our business is a creative business. So if we are given more protection, I believe our industry would develop. We must also understand that we cannot let our standards drop so that clients would not begin to think that they should give our jobs to expatriates.
Are you saying all foreigners should be shut out of the advertising industry?
I am not saying they should shut them out. I am saying they should determine terms of engagement and make it not as open as it is right now. Because what is happening now is that most of the foreigners don't even have offices in Nigeria and yet, they come in to take the briefs, go out, implement them and send the work back to Nigeria to execute. All the talents and channels used are not Nigerians. So how is that going to develop our industry?
Are you saying foreign companies have taken advantage of the lose nature of the industry?
Oh yes, they have. And if we are not careful, they would overrun us completely because Nigeria is considered as one of the biggest investment destinations in the world at the moment. We have just been classified as part of the next eleven countries to watch out for in the area of economic development. So, everybody internationally is looking at Nigeria and the advertising agencies are not an exception. They will overrun us if we are not careful.
But don't you think some people will feel you are afraid of competition?
No, we are not afraid of competition; far from it. We are not scared of competition, we are just afraid of unfair advantages. There are clients working in Nigeria today, who would not work with Nigerian agencies and this is our market. They think the competences are not there and I don't think they are correct.
With over 100 million mobile subscribers in the country, how do you think the mobile phone will influence advertising practice in the country?
The mobile platform in advertising is a huge potential. In fact, for me, I will say the mobile phone has one of the biggest reaches to consumers right now. The only problem is we do not have the infrastructure to do quality content on mobile.
First and foremost, assuming over 100 million mobile phones are in circulation in Nigeria, I will say 80 per cent of them are not smartphones. However, for good quality advertising, you need smartphones and at least 3G or 4G network. You need to be able to do MMS and we are not anywhere near there. What we have in Nigeria is still very small and I believe that with the expected improvement in broadband connectivity and network expansion, access to mobile phone advertising will also improve.
