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.