‘Why doing business with public sector is risky’

The Managing Director of Modion Communications, Odion Aleobua, has described creativity as the heart of communication business. In an interview with The Guardian recently, he stated that creativity is something that the human minds love, adding that there is no way, in any form of communication, be it advertising, PR, or any level that one doesn’t need creativity. 
  
According to him, “You need to realise that telling the truth is not straight jacket. It is the same principle of how you sell the product, or the same way you sell narrative. Take, for instance, in selling a product, I have to get your attention, hold it, convince you with my message, move you with that message. All these are geared towards building equity or making purchases.”     
  
While reacting to the issue of quackery in the industry, he noted, “I think it is Nigeria’s biggest problem and it is not peculiar to PR. You have it manifesting in different professions. We have people who have been bold enough to own hospitals yet lack a single training in healthcare services. It is a problem in Nigeria, but the only difference is that in PR, there is always a day of reckoning.

“You can easily identify that when there is a crisis. In such situations, it is much easier to know who understands the theoretical base of PR, as well as the practical experience, as against someone who lacks either of the two or both. If you understand both, it will stand you out. If you don’t understand it, you are likely to put your clients into deeper trouble. When quacks undertake such, the crisis could escalate. If you don’t manage a crisis well, it could get you or the client out of business.”
  
He shed more on his career background, saying, “For every stage of my movement, what was required was capacity and creativity. Of course, the norm is that industry players usually move from agency to client. But for me, it has been from media to client to start an agency. The training I had from Oando Plc actually prepared me to render an agency’s work because we were one to ourselves. I learned the ropes from Head of Corporate Communications, Meka Olowela, who was coming from the agency side. We are cracking our own briefs because it was difficult for agencies to rack brain for us. We were operating almost like an agency. We were brainstorming consistently. The subsidiaries of Oando Plc were our client. Customer relationship, and cracking briefs, which form what obtained in the agency, were commonplace in Oando. I did that for six years and excelled in it.

“We started at zero level, when Nigeria slid into recession. It was really a tough time doing business at that time. For us as SMEs or start-up, it was an opportunity because clients became open to new ideas from anybody, including us. Unlike those days, when briefs were for bigger agencies, but with budget cuts, they had to rely on people who could match their ideas with a budget meant for start-ups. In real terms, I will say recession actually created strong entry for us and opened doors such that where we showed up, all that was needed was to show capacity. I think that the client’s reduced budget meant a lot to us, even though for big agencies, it could look like crumbs. But for us, it means a lot because for every time we show capacity, it gave us opportunity to do more.”

On agencies’ apathy towards public sector players, he noted, “the issue of working with public sector is that it is structured in ways that you would know that it is anathema to business. We all agreed that the greatest problem to ease of doing business is the public sector. The reason why agencies are happy working with private sector is because it is almost business-to-business.

“So, it is like you are speaking the same challenge; they understand your challenges and understand what it takes to run a business. But with public sector, they don’t really know anything or feel the pinch that you experience. So, in dealing with them you must understand the compliance level as well as the pitfalls. Public sector has a lot of strained dynamism, where policy can change overnight. And if you are caught in policy change, you are likely to lose money. I think as a business, it is in your best interest to protect yourself and ensure that you have a tight contract when dealing with the public sector.”