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Kelechi Nwosu - I Get Excited When We Crack a Good Idea With Possibilities to Travel [interview]
[September 22, 2014]

Kelechi Nwosu - I Get Excited When We Crack a Good Idea With Possibilities to Travel [interview]


(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) He has spent the greater chunk of his youth conceptualising and executing award winning campaigns. This aligns with his vision to drive creativity that grows clients business. It is this passion that he is bringing to the umbrella body of the creative industry, the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) as newly elected President to pilot the affairs of the body for the next two years. Meet Kelechi Nwosu, the creative egghead who sits atop TBWA/Concept, one of the leading advertising agencies in the country. In this interview with Kasie Abone, he unveils his agenda to turn the industry around, his highs and lows, romance and more How did you start out in the industry? I joined ATL (Advertising Technics) as a trainee executive and rose to become account executive and all of that stuff. I left ATL after two years to finish my Masters and then I went to work for Channels Television as a corporate planner. I did a stint at Zepol Advertising before I now went to LTC Advertising. So, I have had a rich history working in the advertising industry since 1990.



As the helmsman at TBWA/Concept, what is it like driving all kinds of people working under you? Its a challenge but its fun sometimes like anybody who is heading an organisation. There are bad days and there are good days. The most important thing is for you to have courage and a vision of what you want to achieve for the organisation and go for it What kind of people do you like having around you that inspire and drive you to success? Its difficult to answer but creativity comes from different things. We are all creative people. I like people who are curious; I like people who are smart, sharp; who see things different; who ask questions; who see what others don't see; these people inspire me.

When do you find most pleasure in the process of producing a copy? When we crack a good idea. If you are working on a copy and you have an insight; and you come up with a good idea and you see that that idea can work on different channels; different media, I get excited because I see possibilities that can make that idea travel. So, ideas interest me Can you described how you emerged because we hear there was this report of intrigues and gang up by the old generation agencies against the emergence of a new generation agency head as president and that your emergence came as a surprise. To put it simply, there was no such thing. The dynamics of the election was that I had worked for the AAAN for a number of years and I had become the vice president in the past two or three years. And I also was working and I offered myself for election. The other candidate, Lanre Adisa, has also been working but I had far more years working for the association. And I don't think that anybody would like to say that Lanre is old school or new school or that I am old school or young school because we are about the same age bracket and I had worked with him before. That insinuation of gang up is completely wrong. By the way, every agency has one vote, young or old, once you are a registered member of AAAN so there was no such thing. I think basically my edge against Lanre was that I had more experience working and supporting the association.


As a member of the past executive, what new initiative are you bringing to the table? Well, that is an advantage but also a challenge. The advantage is that I have been part and parcel of the immediate past executive and I worked closely with other executives. If you notice, our profile as AAAN has risen in the past few years. Not as much as we want it to, but it has risen. We were invited to the national conference. During Lolu Akinwunmi's time we were part of the rebranding Nigeria project. So, you can tell that we are growing. The challenge there, is how do we sustain this growth? The APCON Reforms that was supported by our industry, all of them was part of the growth we have had in our industry. And remember that every effort has its challenge. It is to surmise, to say what the challenges are and how do we build on the previous things that have been done. That is the challenge.

What convinced you that you were going to be a good leader? Well, the general assessment; knowing full well the challenges of the association; having worked with a bunch of colleagues who have been very supportive, who are very forward looking, progressing and the fact that I have also been in the industry. I have run some business for sometime gives me that confidence amongst many other things.

What have you been doing for the association since you emerged? Well, the first thing we did was that we went for a retreat. Its about one and half months now that that election took place. We went for a retreat in Ibadan, hosted by the state government: powered by one of our colleagues, Mr. Tony - And at that retreat, what we did was that we got executive members, members of my team who have been working so hard on this governance and elections; and we put together a plan for our objective - Our objective is to be one of the foremost trade associations in the creative and communication group. We have put together a plan that will break down this things we talked about at the election. At the election I talked about RVP Reform, Vision, Adding Value and being professional. That was the first thing we got out of the retreat. And, out of that retreat, we now identify parts working groups who are already working even before the inaugural committee: the couple of the infrastructural things that we want to do even with the secretariat has started. We are looking for a gen set, we already have that based on the contributions we made. So, we have just started. We have had a lot of goodwill from the media, colleagues and MIPAN (Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria, BON and so many others. So, we are on track.

Can you give us an insight into your agenda for the association? It would not be in my position to give you a more detailed plan now, lets be honest; but the point is that if you have gone through a process of electioneering, there were a couple of buckets, one is that we need to raise the reputation of our association, we need to be relevant; we need to be respected a lot more. One of the things we put on the table and we would do is a Corporate Social Responsibility campaign for the nation. We have even started; we have now built Anti Ebola campaign, which will start running in the next few days. Hopefully, fingers crossed, because we are getting coalition of APCON, Media, producers, we have done the radio, we have done the press; AVOA (Association of Voice Over Artists) did the voicing. MIPAN (Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria) will do the pal cement; APCON (Advertisers Practitioners Council of Nigeria) will endorse it as approving body. This is what we plan as part of the agenda for our tenure. To gain respect, people need to know what we do as creative communication people. The second part of what we will do is that by the rules of the state, the local governments, the state governments, the federal government are bound to employ licensee advertising agencies. They are not doing that now. If we are able to push them and lobby them to do that, there will be a lot more value, a lot more money going round amongst the market, amongst the stakeholders within the association and the auxiliary people who also work with us and even including the media. Right now government is losing taxes, its loosing revenue by not implementing those laws. So, our duty is to raise our corporate profile and make sure that they can cascade value down to our members. In addition to that we are also shoring up our professional learning. We are reconstituting some of the committees and we are energising especially the education to be able to give additional training to people in the association. We know the gap areas in the association. There is already a group looking at the academy. You know the famous academy; the academy is doable. We haven't said we would do it immediately but we have said we should plan so that in the next twelve months we should have the academy running- A working group of senior colleagues, Lanre Idowu is on that group, Dr. Celey Okogun is also on that group; they are already committed to giving us plans on how we can make the academy work. On another level we have a working group looking at the secretariat: you know they are the engine room; they are the people keeping us going; we have to look at them in terms of processes, in the look and feel and also their intellectual capacity. Those are the high buckets of what we are doing. Respect, Reputation via the CSR, professionalism from training and committee work to elevate our association are they key issues this administration would focus on.

Let me take you to the new APCON reforms; it seems that some of your members are averse to the full implementation of the reform. How do you react to this? I don't know of any body who is averse to it. What you heard may be approach on how to implement it. I haven't heard or seen people who are strongly averse or who say we don't want the reforms. And as you know the reform is in two or three parts, the first part of the reform.... as an aside I am going to give you frequently asked questions to help members further understand what we have done with the reform, people should continuously read it so that they can understand it a little bit more. I am also still learning. The first part of the body of reforms that was done by APCON that includes use of local models, local production; if you bring a foreign model, APCON charges you a penalty. So, the first reform part is how do you change the whole conversation to the situation where our industry is going? The second part of the reform is the licensing regime. The third part is establishing the law. Some part of it might go to the legislation. We haven't got there yet. The reforms are on going. In our discussion with APCON we said APCON tell us how we can support to make the reform go? We need to do that so that we can allow for much more responsible advertising, that would take away the quacks and those who are not licensed to practice- It will allow government to get more revenue. It wil allow for better employment. It will give us a voice. Because in the creative and communication business that we are all working we should be shaping culture and we can only have a conversation that shapes this culture if we understand who we are as a people. That is one of the ways the reform can help. Where is the Nigerian voice in advertising.

Talking about our voice and our culture in advertising, there is a Heineken TV commercial running now, I don't see our voice and our culture in there. What does APCON reform say on such ad copies The reform is supposed to help people have resonant advertising done by advertising agencies in Nigeria. The particular ad you talk about, I am sure because they have foreign models in it they would have paid penalties for it. As an industry we think that if people consider our market to be important, and our market is really important, they have to think a little bit more about the work they put out there, how resonant is it. That is just my view on that.

Your industry is driven on creativity but in recent past, creativity seems to be on the downward trend. The gold drought in the last LAIF award attested to this fact. What would your administration do to up the ante We are concerned about that obviously because we are in the creative industry, and for us our industry must thrive; our creativity must thrive. What are we doing about it? We are doing a couple of things. I have told you about training; we have to get that training going on. And training for creative development is about planning, about management. All of us work together in the creative industry to make sure that things happen. I have told you about the academy. A sure and steady foot to get the academy running in the next 12 months . The third thing is LAIF itself; we are looking at how we can expand it and bring in fresh talents. This year, there is a plan to bring in students act into LAIF. So if we are able to attract young people who hopefully will bring fresh ideas as well into LAIF: These are some of the three top things we are doing. Clearly, the other matter is that our economy needs improvement. While we are waiting for that economy to improve we are working to find further points of value. If there are much more advertising opportunity, there would be much more opportunity for creativity. If I remember, the world had a recession recently. If you can see, a lot of work done is what people had done internationally that people are adapting. A lot of them did not qualify to go to LAIF. Talking from agency point of view, there was a year we had a lot of work adopted for Stanbic Bank, we couldn't enter because they were not really local work. We need to be in that position where we are producing really local work for government. Once we are able to do that, as a people we now have a lot more creativity. Creativity thrives with practice Your theme for this years AGM was political advertising, perception management and voter education. How do you think the theme would drive growth and creativity in your industry The theme is that political communication was current, still current; remember we are in an election year. We got a speaker who is well known in political strategy, Will Smith, who was working for Hilary Clinton to come and talk to us. And it was interesting. A lot of our colleagues learnt new things about political communication. How would it help creativity? Our business is shout curiosity. You learn strategy, you learn new tricks and how to apply them. I am sure a couple of our colleagues are already applying them; talking to their prospective clients, political candidates.

What accounts are you working on now? We work for Stanbic IBTC, we work for Glo, we work for Society for Family Health which is in Abuja; we work for Chivita; we work for Evans; we work for CIMA CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants); we do projects for British Council, UAC Corporate: Those are the top ones.

Which account would you consider your dream account, the one you are eyeing now that would give you the waow feeling? Our business is not just about eyeing account. That is the mistake people make. Our business is a creative one. We work for Lagos State government. The Sweet of Lagos Campaign is our initiative. What are we looking for? I think for me, the beauty of our business is that it has got various sizes. Some accounts are more profitable than others but what we look for are those that will make us express ourselves and see impact and growth. We like to see ourselves as people who are driving creativity for growth; using our creativity to drive growth of ideas and growth of bottom line for clients. That is what we are. That is what TWBA/Concept is about.

What would you consider your greatest achievement so far and what is your vision for TBWA/Concept given the fact that the industry is getting a bit more competitive? The industry has always been competitive. Our vision is to establish very clearly, that we are a strong creative organisation that delivers ideas that allows brands to grow. We don't want ideas for ideas sake but ideas for growth. That is what we have been pursuing. Because the country needs growth, we all need growth; the industry needs growth. Growth is an important aspect of our make up. I rather not say what my accomplishments are. I think it will be left for you judging from the outside to do that. And when you are done with advertising, what would you like to leave behind? I think what I would like to leave behind is to have done some great campaigns that have been effective and that have been iconic in the landscape; and hopefully win top awards. If they have been iconic and great, they are likely to win awards at Cannes. That is what is driving me in particular. In terms of our organisation, there are some similarities. We are first working to have ideas that help brands grow, that will help us grow and also help give us our place in history If it was not advertising, what else would it have been? Maybe I would have been a lawyer; two professions that interested me when I was leaving school were advertising and law.

What drives you? Honestly, I won't say that every day this is what drives me but I want comfort, not comfort in the material sense but I want to feel that at the end of the day I have done a very good advertising work Do you have fears? Of course, I have fears. Most people have fears.

What is it you are afraid of? I don't want to work in advertising and finish in advertising; all I have been able to do is take my children to school, get a house and get a car. Those are my fears. I want to be another advertising man who contributed to the growth of the advertising industry.

Give me an insight into your love life My wife is an advertising wife. I knew her for a long time. And we have been friends, very good friends; boy friend girlfriend and we got married in 1996. I knew her when she had finished her College of Education in Owerri (Imo State Capital) and she was entering Ife (University of Ife) to do her degree. I knew her since 1986.

What is it that gives you that satisfaction that your day has been worth the pay? It is a difficult question. As a leader you have management responsibilities and sometimes operational responsibilities. The management responsibilities are much more strategic, thinking a little bit more about the future, And the operation is about keeping the advertising company going. Are we doing XYZ. In my lists of things to do, I usually work out my strategy; sometimes I usually go through them not every day but methodically, So, If I look at them I will know whether I have done enough in juggling the levers. Its a continuous thing. Its life.

And when you stumble on challenges, what do you do I tell you one of the tricks I have learnt is that exercise is good. My brain cracks a lot of hard nuts when I run. I run every other day. My brain is active when I run. Its allows me to take the stress of our work off; and you know our work is quite stressful.

Copyright This Day. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

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