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The Experential Marketers Association of Nigeria, EXMAN, last weekend, elected a new executive to steer the course of the two-year old association. The election, which held on the second day of the association’s 2nd Annual General Meeting in Abeokuta, Ogun State, produced Dr. Rotimi Olaniyan as the new President while Wole Olagundoye, Kayode Idowu, Abiodun Oshinibosi and Kehinde Salami as Vice President, Financial Secretary, Publicity Secretary and General Secretary respectively.
Olaniyan, who is also the MD/CEO of Advantage, a uniquely African consortium of independently owned marketing and communications services companies, agencies and consultancies, was elected unopposed. In his post-election speech, the newly elected president stressed that the agenda of the new exco is pretty clear-cut; to grow profitability and market size, saying that his projected 25 per cent growth rate is realistic given the six critical goal areas he has set up to drive the process. “First is basically protecting the industry from non-professionals, and secondly, is about thought leadership, which is putting in place initiatives that would ensure that we maintain cutting edge as a practice,” he said.
Other areas that Olaniyan believes could spur the intended growth rate include improving the internal training capacity and focus on client engagement because, “It is time to set up a proper forum to be able to engage with clients and bring them up to speed with the challenges that we all face.” According to him, “Everybody in the experiential marketing industry is complaining. We have reduced margin; we have payment compensation terms that we don’t feel is adequate to cover our operational cost not to talk about the little profit at the end of the day, which we can use to reinvest. So, there is a need for us to do some work in that area.” He, however, promised that in the next 30 days, the new exco would come out with a working document that would show a clear calendar of activity and measurable output that would be used to measure their performance in office.
Assessing his tenure, the EXMAN’s immediate past president, Kayode Olagesin, said his two years as pioneer president have been fantastic. According to him, “It is never easy to take up the responsibility of leading a new association and starting from scratch. It has been very interesting, challenging as well as enjoyable because laying the foundation and structure that would guide us going forward were never going to be an easy task.” He highlighted some of the achievements to include breaking the jinx to get started, formation of code of conduct, training programmes and establishing a relationship with the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON, saying, “Our relationship with other sectoral bodies and APCON have improved, which was an issue from the initial stage. We had divergence views as in the appropriateness of doing that but there is a consensus position by all members again that is a major achievement for us.”
Already, Olagesin said, “We are formalizing our relationship with APCON and with that it also means we have the force of law to back up some of the things we want to do to reinforce our association. So, as a foundational president, I am quite happy as what we have achieved and the crowning glory is that we had a very successful election.”
Sharing Olagesin’s sentiment was the immediate past Publicity Secretary, Henry Alade, who also said that the whistle-stop visit of former Nigerian president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, remains one of the highlights of the AGM which held at the Green Legacy Resort, Abeokuta. Alade, managing director, Impact Direct, said, “It’s gladdening that we had an election that was devoid of rancor, everything went on smoothly. President Obasanjo’s visit underscores the growth of EXMAN in the last two years. It means we have done something right and I am sure that the new exco will take EXMAN to greater heights.”
