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Carat Media Perspectives Trains NIJ Students

Carat Media Perspectives Trains NIJ Students   

By  Paul Uviase

   Mr. Emeka okeke: MD Carat Media Perspectives (Middle) with NIJ students

 In a society where certificate glorification is the trend, where theories are encouraged at the expense of pragmatism, where graduates lack the requisite skills to fit into the job environment, some very few institutions including the Nigerian Institute of Journalism Ogba; Ikeja; Lagos understands and has always emphasized that a blend of academic with practical remains a panacea to our societal challenges.

The Nigerian Institute of Journalism over the years has always engage her students on practical exercise and also take them on excursion to the field, where professionals would also share their experience with them on trends in the industry. It could be recalled that some of the students have had opportunity to be trained by the International Press Institute (IPI), some have visited the Channels Television and print media outfits.

Recently, the Post Graduate Students, Public Relations/ Advertising of the Institute visited the Carat Media Perspective, which is one of the nation’s media strategy, planning and buying agency located at GRA, Lagos where the Managing Director, Mr. Emeka Okeke and  the Strategy Director , Mr. Jude Odia  engaged them on intensive training on the nitty-gritty of the profession.

                                     

                                        NIJ's student on their way to Carat Media Perspectives

 

On training Areas:

The training which lasted for almost four hours was centered on the procedures for pitching for clients, sustaining/ retaining clients, how to write a brief, media buying and scheduling, budgeting approaches, creative process, explanations on the roles of regulatory bodies like Advertising Practitioner Council of Nigeria (APCON), and others, clarification of some confusing terms such as advertising objectives, marketing objectives and business objectives media objectives and a host of other.

On methods of winning and losing clients

Okeke said client can be won through personal relationship methods; through Referrals; through Solicitations; through Presentation; through International Affiliation; through Image and Reputation and through Strategic Networking.  He added that certain factors which include: personality conflict, poor performance, poor communication and unsettled claims can lead to the termination of an account with a client.

Components of a campaign brief

He said every campaign begins with a brief. A brief, according to him, contain “ all the information an agency needs to know of the client’s history, product, mission and vision statements and objectives it wants to achieve in the market place. A brief, he said, involves but no but not restricted to: company or organization profile, product or brand information; competitors; target audience; market share; previous promotional campaign objectives; marketing objectives; media preference; campaign coverage; campaign duration; budget/ funding; deadlines and evaluation techniques.

On Budgeting

The Strategy Director of the Carat Media Perspectives, Mr. Jude Odia said there are basically four approaches to budgeting in campaign planning -the  affordable method,

Which is the setting of a promotional goal based on what the client thinks he can afford. - The percentage of sales methods which is entails the setting of promotional budget based on certain percentage of current sales or forecasted sales. -The comparative parity method which involves setting promotional campaign based on what competitors are spending. Lastly, the Objective task method involves an assessment of the communication objectives, the strategies and task needed to attain them and estimating the cost associated with the actualization of these strategies and task and then sum up the costing.

Advertising Objectives:

Mr. Okeke said advertising objectives is involves a clear statement of what advertising is expected to accomplish. He added that advertising Objective should be SMART- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time and location bound. He stated that Advertising Objective can be – to increase and expand consumption by current users or existing customers; create or improve brand image; encourage trial purchase by customers or create awareness-brand name or   image awareness.  

    

Marketing objectives  

According to him, “it is the statement of what marketing is expected to achieve”  

Such objectives, he said could be to induce  or increase brand’s share of market to 60%; to launch a new product/ announce a new services or to even double the sales of the product over a period of time.

Business/ corporate objectives

He said   apart from the business objective containing the vision and the mission statement of the organization, the objectives of every business is to make profit.

The training session ended with a question and answer session after which the students were conducted round the various departments of the agency by the Managing Director.  The carat media work for Nokia, MTN, P&G, Derica, Hennessy, Bolous (Piaggeo, Hajoue Suzuki, and B29), Nigerian Breweries Corporate, Porsche, vital foam and a host of others.

                                                                                

Repeal Anti - Press laws

Repeal Anti- Press laws- Shamusi tells FG

 A former Assistant Director at the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), Shamusi Tiamiya has disclosed that the Freedom of Information Bill (FOIB) as endorsed by Nigeria Government may not work to the advantage of journalists until a number of anti- press laws which tend to render the freedom worthless are repealed. He said this during a lecture on “The Challenges of News Gathering and Documentation: The Radio Experience” which he delivered at The Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos recently.

According to him, “every profession has its own measure of problem and hazards and journalism is no exception. Of course, there are peculiar problems which journalist have to contend with that are alien to other professionals”.

According to him, these challenges include anti-press laws, news censorship, stone walls, commercialization of news, and non-invitation to news events, logistics, and apathy on the part of the public. These challenges, he said are mostly encountered in the process of beat coverage

                                                          President Goodluck Jonathan.

             Anti- Press Laws  

                                                                                            

                                                     

                                                    NUJ's President, Mohammed Garba

                                                                                                                                                        

The retired veteran journalist said one of the greatest headaches of any reporter in this country is the highly limiting legal framework within which he has to operate. “In spite of the much vaunted official claim that Nigeria is one of the freest in terms of press freedom in Africa, many draconian laws which make it almost impossible for journalist to practice, still adorn the nation’s statute book”.

He listed these laws to include; the state security (detention of persons) Decree 2 of 1984; treason and other offences (special Military Tribunal) Decree 1 of 1986; constitution (suspension and Modification) Decree 107 of 1984; Offensive Publication (prescription) Decree 35 of 1993, Sedition Offences Act of 1962; Defamation Act of 1962; Printing presses Regulation Act 1958 and Obscene publication act of 1962.

News censorship

Shamusi states that censorship which can come in form of institutional and self-imposed is also a major challenge to the journalist. He said the institutional censorship is imposed on the by some laws of the land. A journalist, he said would be committing  hara-kiri by publishing certain stories( that is if it ever get across to them) no matter how good or of interest to the public they may be.

Stone walls

Also, retired editor revealed that stone walls come to play when a reporter fails to penetrate through the official wall built around some highly placed government functionaries from whom he wants to obtain certain vital information. Oftentimes, he said, there are instructions that no government officials should talk to the press even when the information the journalist is to clear seeking is necessary clear the air on certain misconceptions about a particular official action by the public.

Commercialization of news

 Shamusi said that under true democracy, the public should have unhindered access to information which is necessary for survival and for the pursuit of happiness. Ironically, he said a big punctuation mark on this freedom of access to information is the commercialization of news by some broadcasting stations in the country.

“ As a result of commercialization as for example in Radio Nigeria, many news stories a reporter  comes in contact with or those that find their way to the editors desk are spiked because oftentimes, they are considered as commercial stories and the people concerned are not prepared to pay for what they considered being in the interest of the public. The problem is that the editor or reporter is left with a very small room to maneuver in sourcing materials for his bulletins”.

Possible solutions

The retire journalist said to proffer solutions to these myriad of operational problems,” we must go back to where we started from, and these are problems posed by anti-press laws. The solution here is for government to accede to calls already being made on it to repeal these legislation.”

He maintained that there are enough provisions in the country’s judicial system to take care of any breach of the law. He said these extra-tough legislation are superfluous and there, unnecessary, “with the repeal of these laws, the problem of institutional censorship of news will be taken care of while the self-imposed censorship will also disappear by-and-by as media practitioners, especially those in government owned electronic media, realize that they are doing themselves more harm than good by their over-cautious and timid approach to news presentation”.