Mr. Tony Agenmomen boasts of over 32 years in the marketing industry, and retired as Senior Strategy Manager at Nigerian Breweries Plc. Agenmomen who emerged as president the of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, (NIMN), in an interview with selected journalists in Lagos shared his vision and mission for the body. Daniel Adeleye was there. Excerpts:
You’re supposed to be enjoying your retirement, but here you are preparing to lead the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN). Why did you throw your hat in the ring so to speak?
Yes, when I retired from the Nigerian Breweries, I think I made it pretty clear to my friends that I was not going to be sleeping. Now, coming into the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria to head it is not sudden, I mean it is something that has been a burning desire for quite some time and it has been there for quite some time because here we are, I have spent 32 years of my life in this profession, and you actually want to be proud of the profession that you belong to and the umbrella body for the marketing profession is the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), which incidentally apart from being a professional institute is also chartered by the Act of parliament to regulate marketing and make sure that all those who call themselves marketing professionals are actually marketing professionals. I am sure you know pretty well the history of the institute; it has not been what it is supposed to be.
Today, I don’t think that so many of the people who ought to identify with it are happy to be called members of the institute. Indeed, when they hear of other professional institutes, they kind of grin with envy, so it has been my burning desire that look, if you really want to be recognised, you have to be in the champions league; we are currently not playing in the champions league and I believe that with the few things that we have been able to do for our brands, when we were working in Nigerian Breweries and for the company, I believe that we can bring that experience to bear to bring the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) to play in the champions league, and so that is just a simple desire.
What new things are you bringing on board if elected as the president of NIMN that is going to separate you from what others have done?
Actually, there is no board, so it is like we really want to start afresh, just like you have rightly noted that the National Institute of Marketing today is, if I were to put it in a proper marketing narrative, the equity is very weak. I think that summarises everything about it, the equity of the National Institute of Nigeria putting it in marketing terms is very weak but all the great marketers will know that, that in itself is not something for you to throw up your hands in surrender; it means that you bring in your marketing skills, your knowledge and everything to build the brand. The brand is there, we have the people, we have the resources, it is just for us to actually do the kind of things that we have done for our brands.
We have managed great brands that were at one time or the other troubled right, and we brought them back to limelight. If you know the history of Star, at one point in this country, Star was in number three position in the 80s but we brought it back; Legend was nowhere but you know where Legend is today. If we can take a brand like Legend, for example, to be a big challenger to the leader in the Stout market, then turning the National Institute of Marketing around with the great professionals that we have in the country, for me, is a piece of cake but I think what has been lacking is the right leadership and I think that is what we are going to offer and with the quality of people that also want to contest in the council. Then, with that kind of team, I am sure that in no distant time, you will be very proud of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria. Like I said, we actually really want to play in the champions’ league and you cannot play in the champions’ league if you are weak and you know what that means.
You are coming from the private sector to contend with those people who are coming from the public sector. When you look at those who have managed the institute, they seem to have that attitude of the public sector, how do you get to manage this if eventually, you become the president?
Let’s look at it this way; I think I even need to stress it a little bit when I talk about equity challenge. And then I will come back, if you like to those who are used to the civil service way of running an organisation. I think that addressing the equity challenge of the institute today will require asking some salient questions like: when you look at the stakeholders, is there anything that the institute is giving to them today? Is there anything that they can look forward to the institute for? The answer to such questions is No.
Let’s start with students. I am talking of students who are in the polytechnics and universities who are reading Marketing; obviously, that should be the foundation of building the membership of the institute; today, we don’t offer them anything, there is nothing to be proud of, we don’t give assistance in terms of training, in terms of funding, we are not organising great programmes where they can come in and listen to and experience marketing processes. If you look back to when we were in the university, I think the most attractive thing each student wants to do is to say, this is my association. The Sociology students have their own, the History students have their own but today I think that sense of pride is not there. So first of all, we want to build that back into the universities and the polytechnics so that when they are proud, they would want to be identified as members of the institute. We want all of them to come in.
Can you to talk about some of your value offerings for the stakeholders?
In terms of value proposition, I’ll like to begin with our member companies. I think there had been some major issues with the Nigeria Lottery Regulatory Commission and all the lotto groups and the rest of them. My attitude to this is that it is not all about fight because you don’t win such battles by sheer bravado. It is to sit down with them because I think a lot of it is based out of ignorance. I know I was also involved at some point. When the lottery board tells you that consumer promotion, which is the basic marketing function that is recognised all over the world, is nothing. I mean, the only thing I have is the need to be educated, the need to explain to them what it is all about because I don’t want to use the word ignorance, but I will like to say misunderstanding of what marketing stands for and because of that, a lot of companies have been harassed here and there.
But talking about making a few changes in the institute, if you recollect in the past few months I have been the first Vice President and one of the things that I have already set out to do, again in terms of playing in the champions’ league (pardon my use of that expression, again), if you recollect about two years ago, there was a national conference and a lot of professional organisations were represented, yet the National Institute of Marketing was not there and that was because we were not aligning with other professional bodies at that time. Now, one thing I have done in the past few months since I came in as first Vice President is to drive interactions with the other professionals organisations and I think only two weeks ago, we were formerly admitted into the Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria (APBN), so that takes us to that level, and these are some of the things that we are going to do in terms of putting the issues on the front burner.