2027 Campaigns : Agencies Need Better Standing With the Political Cllass….. Kelechi Nwosu—– Ex – Boss , TBWA Concept Unit

Kkelechi Nwosu is the Former Managing Director / Chief Executive Officer at TBWA Concept Unit and Est while President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN). As Nigerians gear up towards flag off for 2027 electioneering campaigns , the top notch creative expert takes critical examination of the country’s political campaigns environment, readiness of creative advertising agencies in chatting the course as well as campaigns impacts at shaping voters behavior . . He speaks also on other sundry industry conversations, advertising spends , the pitch process, industry debts and payment issues among other things. He believes agencies need better standing with the Nigerian political class to create effective, positive political campaigns. News-Mart ‘s Editor, Clifford Amuzuo captured views of this industry veteran in a recent interactive press interview……Excerpts :

How would you describe current state of advertising bearing in mind advertising spend in first half of 2026. What will be your outlook on advertising spend in the remaining half of the year.
I don’t have the numbers for Q 1 but the projections suggest they will be higher, and theoretically because of politics, if that spend will come to the organized advertising sector, I do not know, I cannot really answer for that but Politicians have a way of spending their money, they can go directly , they can even hire people from anywhere in the world, they can just do whatever they want, but in theory because of politics, it will likely go higher because we are actually in the political season, elections are next year and I think February next year, I think campaigns will probably open by September this year. Typically the spend for most companies would normally go higher at the second half to last quarter because of the Christmas and New Year season, usually it’s all promotions, meetings and meetings and so on and so a lot of things can make that spend go up at the end of the year.
Truly speaking, a lot companies presently tend to be cutting down their Marketing budgets, what does a company risk when they see advertising as a cost and not as an investment.
Well they risk losing market share, they risk losing relevance, there is the likelihood of their franchise becoming diminished, they risk top of the mind awareness. If you are not on the mind of the consumer and somebody else takes over that position, if you come back it becomes a lot tougher job for you , which is why the famous story about CocaCola continuing to advertise during the second world war even when they didn’t have products becomes very apt, they continued to advertise in the UK from what we learnt back then in history, so there is a risk for many brands if they don’t advertise , if they cut back on their Marketing spend, however what tends to happen is that they necessarily do not come back entirely, they reallocate, they probably go to do some offline activities, some do digital or find a way to engage ,those who are smart about it and hope for the best, but in reality some of them are also struggling with the real budget because of the way things have gone this year.
There is this pressure now on agencies to prove return on investments, should sales alone determine the success of investment or how should it be determined.
No, not at all, that shouldn’t be, I think it’s a dashboard of things, Sales is one of them , like I said you need to look at top of the mind awareness, purchase intent and consideration, how are people looking at the brand, what are the objectives you served at the beginning of the campaign, net promoters course is another thing that people use. Net promoters course is the difference between those people who promote your brand and those who do not promote your brand compared to the other persons, so it’s a dashboard , it’s a cash of values and value index is what you use not just sales alone, but sales is important.
Having worked with so many brands in the past over the years, what is it that makes a good agency, client relationship.
Mutual respect, values., the fact that you allowed the agency to express itself, the fact that the agency must also listen and listen actively, the fact that you do not have a master servant relationship. Sometimes some clients come from a position of condescension to the agency. The agency, client relationships that works well is when people treat each other fairly and with mutual respect , that’s when they are able to develop really great, it doesn’t mean they won’t disagree, conflict and consensus as I learnt in my 101 Sociology class donkey years ago, conflict is important, consensus is also important, that’s what makes a good agency, client relationship. And I will give you an example, when we started working on MTN in 2001, I met a man called Olu Akanmu who was the Senior Brand Manager at that time at MTN and we went on together doing great things and we are still friends up till toda, collaborating on one or two projects, un till now he calls me Bebeto, because he is Romareo, you remember the famous Romareo, Bebeto midfield combination, so we were at the midfield, he was at the client side and I at the agency side coordinating with the media, PR, Event, and he was coordinating virtually with all the youths in MTN as at that time, there was a beautiful relationship and than mutual respect, the disagreements and agreements apart from the fact that we were coming from two different places, but with one vision, and that we were able to communicate allowed for us to be able to build that brand at that time, that was about 2004, 2005 so that sort of relationship is golden and that’s what you need.
Pitching remains one of the most bitter issues in the industry. In the current pitching process agencies are not treated fairly, what new model do you think can help the pitch process.

Well I think my successor should have a view on this. The past few years as an agency we refrained from making pitches, I won’t say all, but many of them, sometimes it’s a waste of time, the truth is, if you want to hire an agency, see the work we’ve done, see the people, see the process, look at their pedigree, and then you go and ask us questions, these days if you ask for a page even if its just credentials we come there with a point of view, we will tell you what we’ve done and how we would want to approach it, that’s how it used to be done. There is a client for instance that we worked for, I will not name names now but may be I should, that client asked for a page and we went to the market and did a whole strategic approach, market needs, consumer behavior, etc, etc and did crcreatives. After the work was done the client came back to us and said, we like one or two of the TVCs you developed, can you please twist it a bit and then come back to us because we are judging your TV commercials against the TV commercials of the other people. We now said A, that was not stated at the beginning of the page, B you have to pay us another money to do that for you, and secondly if you told us you were doing a TVC pitch, we could have just given you twenty TVC’s so you can pick the one you want, you didn’t tell us you had a brief, you came from the strategy and all of that, and the client was, like Nigerians would say, oh you are arrogant, because they think they own you and they own your school fees at the agency and all that, we ended that relationship and that client had the temerity to say to us that she will blacklist us. We now said to her, we don’t think there is anything like that, you don’t own the agency, if we mustn’t work for you, there are other people , other fishes in the ocean , you are not in a position to blacklist us, you can’t blacklist an intellectual property owner , the best you can say is that for the time that you are there , you don’t hire them and it’s up to you, you are loosing and if you don’t see value in us, we don’t see value in you, you go your way and we go our way. So I see all the need to be very careful about pitches, I have done very silly pitches in my life, very many unwarranted pitches, I am particularly against pitches, if you want pitches ask questions about the agency, pick them up , find out where they are coming from, and what they have done. The way I look at it , I used to have an aunty then who says to me, Stars don’t audition, if an agency is well positioned, done some good work s, and you see them why do you want to go through the humiliation of coming to stand up and say pick me and we often do that as agencies, I think its pretty poor and that is why values and value need to come to the table, because if you value me enough then we need to have a conversation, do you ask him why he has to pitch, when you are not a lawyer who says tell me exactly what you will be saying in court and please tell me how much it will cost, is that how it works, do you ask doctors to pitch, when you go to a doctor do you say to a doctor please give me the prescriptions if I don’t like it and so on….why do we cheapen ourselves , I don’t like pitches as you can clearly tell.
Let’s talk about AAAN, having served as President of AAAN do think the association’s role in addressing issues in the industry is actually commendable.
It is, the Association has done its best, I hear people, some of our colleagues who are a little bit far off, they talk outside the circle , people thought that AAAN is something, it’s our saint, if there is anyone who wants changes, come in, make your suggestions, lobby for it, that’s what it is, I think it’s done commendably well across different areas, it doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement but I think they’ve done well.
What do you say about the issue of debts and delayed payments and payments generally, how serious is the problem and how do think it could be nipped in the board.
There is a couple of Solutions and one is that agencies must just brace up, and follow the terms of the contract, sometimes we are worse enemies, sometimes we are afraid and there is a reason to this, you look at the conversation I told you we had with that particular client, some agencies may not be able to have that kind of conversation because they are afraid of been blacklisted, they are afraid of being put in a corner and told to kneel down like a little boy, you are afraid that they won’t pay you and our legal system is also not helpful, if we have a disagreement on let’s say, money, sometimes it takes years before its solved , but we must be able to stand up and say no, you won’t treat me that way, am a business person like you , you need to pay me the money that you owe me, industry wide , I was in the advertising standards of practice Committee, I represented AAAN , and that committee is the one that said no one should owe anybody for more than 45 days, the current ADVAN President has been quarrelling with that, you guys should ask him why, he said he wants to maintain terms that are individual, if I agree that you pay me in 120 days that’s my term, he doesn’t want an industry standard, what that particular ISOP did was to standardize payment so that agencies are not owed for 45 days, and agencies will not also owe suppliers, or vendors or media houses for 45 days, that is an ultimate big issue in our in our industry, infact let me say a disgrace and let’s be honest about it, if you look at the cost of money and you are owing somebody for over 45, 90 days it doesn’t make economic sense, that comes back to the economics that am taking about, so we must be able to move the needle forward and position things well across the chain, like I said, from clients to agency, agency to the media houses and that’s what the ISOP is saying and that’s is part of our contributions as AAAN. People must take recourse in those available platform. I also work in a Committee right now that looks at industry guides, people must take recourse in that, for instance, look at Etisalat, those guys were owing agencies, those guys reported them to us and then they are settling it , people must take recourse to that particular provision of the practice which says, you owe me money and you have to pay, you got to be able to document that money, that’s another thing, you’ve got to be clear about it, document it properly, be sure that you have your bills well articulated.
Looking at the 2027 elections, with over 30 years in the industry, what opportunities do you see for agencies, and also what responsibilities are there for agencies.
Typically we should be at the forefront, suggesting Communication ideas, strategic ideas, that’s the opportunity, but like I said it doesn’t often work that way because the ways of Politicians are not pure, that’s true, they work in very very myriad ways that some of us find it difficult to understand, they don’t often do the right things, even sometimes they go do pitches with people from outside the country, but it’s not all of them, I ve been fortunate to work with a couple of them, let’s not generalize, but we need better standing with the political class, we need them to say, I want to work with this advertising agency or Marketing Communications group to further my course, maybe they don’t believe that their campaign messages would have effect on voting patterns or something, maybe.
After many decades of building brands and mentoring talents in the industry, what legacy do you want to leave behind.
I think legacies should be left for people who watch what one does and say yes you’ve done this. Honestly I do not even remember the things that I have done, my natural motivations are just, keep going, but to keep going in a sort of the right direction, my ambition has always been to say, when I die my tomb should read, here lies a man who built great campaigns, xyz….so I think my legacy, you guys should tell me when you do further investigation.
Any advice for the next generation of advertising professionals.
Our burdens is life, we have to observe from life, we need to learn from life, we need to read, we need to ask questions, we need to be curious, we need to be creative, continuously we must believe in ourselves and sometimes I think we lack self belief, we think of ourselves as they say in pigen, less less, if this was not done, we are always looking for why . If you look at our worth now internationally, as at the last count, a lot of countries in Africa , a lot of countries in the developing world they are winning, we need to believe that we ve got it, that we have it, we need to believe in ourselves, but you must work as you believe in yourself and we need to value what we bring to the table enough so we can get paid enough, and we do show that we ought to be paid well enough, that is the economics part of it, you show value and you earn value and you ask for your value, and we must continue to review our economic model which is a little bit latent, I am happy always to speak, to mentor anywhere , anytime and that’s probably what I will be doing going forth as I have stepped aside.