Carat Media Perspectives Trains NIJ Students
By Paul Uviase
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Mr. Emeka okeke: MD Carat Media
Perspectives (Middle) with NIJ students
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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.
