WPP-owned global marketing research company, Millward Brown has formally established an office in Nigeria, five years after operating in Ghana from where it served its Nigerian clients. In 2007, it planned to set up a full operational office in the country but was discouraged by complex and cumbersome registration process.
But Nigeria, big market to ignore and Africa’s ‘powerhouse,’ is enthralling to Millward Brown that has beat all odds to set up shop in Nigeria to provide service in marketing communication research to more clients and create value in Nigeria’s over N100 billion advertising industry. Established in the UK in 1974, the objective of the company in Nigeria is to assist organisations, which spend huge sums on advertising yearly, to develop strong advertisements that meet and connect with consumers.
The company’s coming will definitely jolt rethinking in advertising business as a lot of money goes into especially TV advertising. Clients will begin to re-examine the process and their advertisement to ensure they are gotten right with expected ROI achieved. “Our strategy therefore is to help them test the advertisement before they make the massive big budget commitment,” Soumya Saklani, managing director, Millward Brown West Africa, told BusinessDay last week in Lagos.
In some instances, advertisements are produced with good lyrics and visuals to the delight of viewers but do not connect with the consumers and ultimately fall short of creating the necessary impact. To Saklani, advert testing is about optimisation of adverts with the objective of ensuring that advertisers get value for their money.
Clarifying that such expertise insight is complementary to the work of creative agencies, he said the idea is to help organisations save money and focus advert copy and visuals directly in order to achieve return on investment. “Ineffective ad is a sheer waste of money and resources,” he noted.
“In the UK, we test a number of adverts, some of which have won awards. We are the best friends of advertisers. In advert testing, it is the creative agencies that win the glory,” he stated. Second leg of Millward Brown’s objective in Nigeria is brand health research. Under this role, it will help clients understand the strength of their brands in the minds of their consumers.
“We tell our clients what the consumers think about their brands and what they should do for their brands to stand out,” he said. According to him, my strong motivation in Nigeria is based on the fact that Nigeria is without doubt the ‘powerhouse’ of Africa and one of the continent’s leading and most dynamic growth economies, and a significant member of the ‘Next 11’ club of growth countries.
“Tremendous growth in recent times, rising income levels and consumer aspirations has even further increased marketers’ need to understand real-time how their brands are evolving on their journey and their communication connecting with consumers and by extension their requirement for consumer research,” he disclosed.
On how Millward Brown, which offers a full qualitative and quantitative research service in 51 countries working across a wide range of industries and categories, will compete in the local market, the managing director of Millward Brown Nigeria, Ugo Geri-Robert, said “we are not everything but have passion for brands specialising in advertising, marketing communication, media and brand equity research.”
Speaking on the level of research in Africa, she said Africa ratio is about 3 - 4 percent of the global research. In Nigeria, it is lower when compared with other African countries, because the research culture is still evolving.
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