Development of our people is cardinal to us – Insight Redefini CEO
Dr. Ken Onyeali Ikpe is the Group Managing Director of Insight Redefini, sub-Sahara’s biggest marketing communication, advertising and public relations group, which marked its 40 years in business recently. In this interview with the communications expert speaks on the company’s philosophy and how, by dint of hard work, the management has positioned it at the leading edge of Nigeria and, indeed West Africa’s marketing communications market, amongst other issues.
Insight Redefini has been celebrating 40 years. How difficult has the journey to survival been?
Well, 40 years has been a difficult but progressive journey. Not many multinational businesses survive in 40 years in Africa and Nigeria, talk less of a local business. It has been a tedious, tough journey, but has it been productive and successful? People say yes. Well, it is always left for the jury to say that. If we’ve been on the high for 40 years, it suggests that we’ve done something tremendously well in those years. And by the way, when we say Insight, we’re referring to our flagship company, which was born on January 2, 1980. Between that 1980 and now, that Insight has given birth to 12 other companies. Now, it is a behemoth of marketing communication.
Quite some success, so how are you looking ahead?
What we have done as a group is to move from the road well-travelled to the road least travelled. In the next two years, our plan is to move to the road never travelled. The road welltravelled is the legacy road in the industrial economy where services are designed around multinationals, designed around economies and companies that are set to deliver and produce in a certain way. The cycle is very simple: you produce and take it to the warehouse, the warehouse is full and you do mass communication to instigate interest. Then communication helps you take it to the market place and there is consumption and you produce again. That is the cycle for the industrial age. Today, the consumer is not waiting for that cycle. You produce and take straight to the consumer, you need to eliminate the distribution warehouse because the consumer does not have that time; he wants agility, so you are talking to that consumer directly. The skill set and the required capacity are different today, so you must redesign your offering in such a way that it addresses new frontiers. And the new frontier is not the multinational, it’s that small or medium scale entrepreneur
who does not understand how communication can build his business. That is the road least travelled, and from there we move to the road never travelled. The road never travelled is that you eliminate the box. You know people say ‘think outside the box’. If you are thinking within the box, that is the road welltravelled. When you think outside the box, that is the road least travelled. But when you eliminate the box, it is the road never travelled. You have to create a new proposition that even the consumer has not come to the reality that he or she needs it.
How do you feel being at the helm of affairs as CEO of Insight in this period it is celebrating 40 years?
It is very fulfilling. I have been in the system for 25 years, which is a substantial part of my life, the most productive part of it. So, for me to have survived it in those times and grow with the group till it becomes 40, I can tell you it’s a wonderful feeling, but one that comes with a huge responsibility. It’s even a challenge for me now because the little bird in me is asking me what’s next. Things must have come together for me, including some fate and divine blessing. I could have enriched myself a long time ago. But I had long known as a young man that you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. So, every time there could be confusion, I always refer to Matthew 22:21: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. Make sure you are contented; contentment eliminates all manner of sickness, as you are not under any pressure. Challenges awaken me. The challenges change every day; what I wanted to solve yesterday is different from what I want to solve next week if we must keep dominating. If being Number Two was enough for us, then I wouldn’t have been under pressure. But our group does not know Number Two on all parameters.
What attracted you Insight in the first place?
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I didn’t even know the industry or the name ‘Insight’ when I joined in 1999. I had just finished my youth service three years prior and was seeking to be retained in Shell after my youth service there. While I was doing that, because I had been trained to consult as an expert in development economies, I was trying to earn a living and gather more knowledge. But I stumbled on one of the stakeholders of Insight and during that conversation, he said to me, ‘Listen, it’s like you are made for Insight’. Out of curiosity, I asked what that was and he said it is advertising. It took me time to understand what that meant, what was the essence, why did people go into advertising and why did we need advertising at all. That was when I discovered the AIDA principle, meaning Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. I realized that it was interesting after all and I may leave this multinational (Shell) desire and make history because I was quite young and curious. For me, the push and the enticement was that once the opportunity was open, I asked myself whether it was not better to be the head of a goat than to be the tail of an elephant. So, I chose to be the head of a goat. For me, relevance matters a lot, too. If I had remained with a multinational for 25 years, I may have made more money and got more influence from a small circumference. But this career has worked out and it’s taking me round the world. The knowledge required to succeed here is far wider and more challenging than the knowledge required to succeed in the oil and gas.
How many multinational accounts can Insight boast of?
We work with all the multinationals. There must be one aspect of a multinational using our group services. If we are not managing the brand creation or strategy, we must be dealing with activation or engagement or the strategic communication side of it, or the media inventory side of it. Specifically, we have been with the Pepsi brand, the 7up Bottling Company for 28 years, We have grown the brand right from the situation when there was that huge gap in the market share between Pepsi and Coke to, as we speak, it is thin in terms of market share. We have been with the Nigerian Breweries for over 12-15 years. We have been dealing with all its brands. We also have Nestle, Cadbury, MTN and 9mobile. In the financial sub-sector, we have handled brands from UBA to First Bank, Bank PHB, FCMB, Keystone, Heritage and Polaris. If you put the group all together, I can tell you that our volume of business is over N25 billion per annum, which is huge in this context if you consider that all we sell is intellectual property.
What is the structure of Insight’s international partnerships, and how much of influence does that have on its businesses?
I am happy you used the word ‘partnership’, because what is common in this environment is affiliation. We were the first here to move away from affiliation to partnership. We are currently with Publicis, which is the second biggest network in the world, with its head office domiciled in Paris. Four years ago, Publicis approached us and said they wanted to buy equity in our group. They said they didn’t want affiliation because affiliation means
that you can only trade in the name. Affiliation can give you that. But partnership means that you must have an equity investment. So, four years ago, we let go 25 per cent of our group to the Publicis network, which was the first time such a partnership would happen in Nigeria. Why did we do that? We didn’t do it because we wanted more businesses, riding on the Publicis network. Already, more than 80 per cent of the businesses in our group are local; we win locally, so we don’t rely on international network to attract businesses. What is primary and cardinal to us always is: can this network affect our people in such a way that it confers them with more knowledge and expertise with which we can get businesses? So, it is the development of our people. Our biggest asset is our people and we train them in such a way that they are way ahead of industry standard so that when we go to pitch, it looks unconventional. The partnership brings knowledge, expertise and technology and helps us raise the skill set. Where there are gaps, we close them. That is why we now have Leo Burnett, DBB, Zenith, Digitals, etc. in our group because they are all Publicis brands, and because we are part of the network we replicate those brands in Nigeria.
What has the partnership experience been like?
It’s been challenging because it challenges the status quo. We have to be conscious of the standard we maintain. The Publicis network doesn’t want just a Leo Burnett of Nigeria, it wants the Leo Burnett you see in France, London, South Africa or Moscow. It must be the same in terms of the quality that you will find in any part of the world. It’s a challenge because they won’t accept those Nigerian standards. You must build the name really high otherwise you cannot trade with it. Insight itself is a stickler for standard and professionalism.
Where do you see Insight in the next 40 years?
I see Insight in the next 40 years as a truly Nigerian multinational capable of competing with any multinational in the world. We are already there but I see us greatly consolidated.