Aniekan Umanah is a former commissioner for information and strategy in Akwa Ibom State, recently founded African Media Network. In this interview with Afolabi Idowu, he bears his mind on his new passion.
Tell us about your newly established company – African Media Network?
The African Media Network is a trusteeship with membership from different parts of Africa. We have members from South Africa, facilitators from Kenya, we have network partners from Ghana, from Cameroon, we have partners within Nigeria with the leadership of it coming from Abuja and coordinating the continental activities. The key for us is stimulating growth and opportunities within the continental media. And we would do that by driving synergies, building knowledge and closing skill gap for media people and organisations. And more importantly, stimulate and grow content for the continental media. We are currently building a content app which will make content creation a very big deal for those who need to understand. We would also be involved at the very basic level; a lot of training programmes that would create knowledge. Partnering with organisations that are relevant to what we are doing. Very soon, we would be announcing a new media optimisation interactive programme that will enable people understand how we can create the hybrid between the traditional and the new media. See the possibilities, challenges and how to curb the electronic vandalism that is raking organisations, families that are creating all sorts of problems. How do we cage this new form of terror within the cyber space? These are some of the discussions that will take centre focus in the discussion we would be holding sometime in July. That’s where we are going with the African Media Network.
How do you see the advertising industry and the impact of recession on the industry?
I must say that the advertising and media industry like every other business in Nigeria got hit by the punch of recession. For a country that lost over 60% of revenue and income base, you can see that it was almost like hanging on a cliff. And it was compounded by dwindling oil prices at the time. Many things went wrong; our GDP went below expectation, oil prices went down, income erosion and all that. So the industrial and financial base of the country witnessed erosion. When that happened; we saw an unstable foreign exchange regime which got to a point that Naira was exchange over N500 to a dollar. For instance, in 2014 to 2015, the advertising spend stood at about N97billion and of course, you know clearly towards the end of 2015, it has started going down. By mid 2016, we recorded less than half of that number. That throws up the challenge. We can see clearly even in terms of TV, radio and outdoor, most global organisations down their outdoor size including the telcos that accounted for almost 60% of the spend at the time. 2014, we had N93.1billion, 2015 grew a little bit perhaps because of political activities. But again if the economy has no valve it couldn’t have been so even with the political activities. So that now calls for serious concern for industry operators who must now start to reinvent the processes. Take a page of newspapers and look at; how many papers today can show you five pages of full colour? Many are on barter. We are industry operators, we know the batter ads. Several others are fillers while some are paid for. How does it impact on the media? Look at television, prime products running on prime time are coming down. You find like one insert staggered over a period not creating the desired impact. This means that the revenue base is not helping that. The return from sales is not helping investment. It’s a double edge sword. So many companies have had to look at experiential marketing, unorthodox means, and digital platforms. And with over 70 million Nigerians on the internet, we can also see that it’s providing a very strong platform that is cheaper. The industry is in comatose but we are happy that it is beginning to show signs of improvement. And we hope that this will be sustainable. Every investor became very careful from the end of 2015 because it was like delving into the unknown. If you look at the over hundred known print titles, can we point at thirty today that are truly surviving? I’m not talking about the mushrooms that fill 16 pages once in a blue moon in the name of publishing. How many televisions and radio stations today can truly say they are standing on their feet? Outside of the big ones, the others are just merely hanging in there. The radios are looking inwards into local content and local programming. I also know what NBC has done with the segmentation to allow for city based radio which is now helping. The licensing is now more of city based radio so that people can begin to look at content within the locality to survive. For outdoor, it’s almost totally bad story. Why do we have to get people to borrow money from banks and buy space and air time, run advertising and owe them for six months or one year. That’s killing the industry. That’s why several media organisations can’t pay salaries as at when due which is not good. So agencies must be responsive to their bits and clients responsive to theirs. So when these relationships come together with truthfulness and sincerity, the media would survive.