Agenmonmen: Competitive Awards Will Earn Respect

In this interview, former President of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, Tony Agenmonmen, speaks on the place of competition in brand building and how NMA earned the first international accreditation in Nigeria as an award institution. Raheem Akingbolu presents the excerpts:

Since you bowed out of Nigerian Breweries Plc, as a Senior Strategy Manager, you have remained active in the marketing environment, including serving as President of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) and later as a leading figure behind the National Marketing Awards. Are you not fulfilled yet?

I’m very fulfilled and one of the signs of my fulfilment is that urge to further impact the market through other means as a professional marketer. After leaving Nigerian Breweries, where I worked successfully on many international brands and excelled, I saw the need to impact the market further through our noble institute – the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), to reposition it. I met the institute in a very ugly state, with little or no respect and I embarked on total overhauling. Today, the institute has become a very strong brand that every member is proud to identify with.

What makes the National Marketing Award unique, despite the array of awards in the market?

First let me start by stating this; Nigeria is a big market and many more award organizations can still join the train. Again, as much as possible, I don’t want to knock any heads or knock any other awards, but what I can say to define NMA is that we don’t see ourselves as a Nigerian award. We don’t compare ourselves with the Nigerian standard. At the beginning -before the first edition, we wanted to look at the best of the best marketing awards worldwide. So, till date, we are benchmarking ourselves against what you can obtain in other advanced markets. From South Africa to Europe and to the US in terms of quality, transparency and in credibility, are the hallmarks because I wouldn’t want to sit down in my office and you come and give me an award. It doesn’t mean anything. Even Journalists, who are taking part in the marketing journalists of the year, for example, are competing with other people. There will be a panel of judges that will judge what one has done against what other people have done. For me, that is the standard all over the world. There has to be competition. If you want me to summarize it, our emphasis is on quality, transparency, and integrity. What are we doing to ensure that? What we have done to ensure that is number one, we discussed with five major industry groups, Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (ARCON), which is the regulator, National Institute of Nigeria (NIMN), which is also the regulator as far as marketing is concerned, Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) which is for the advertising body, Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN) and the Experiential Marketing Association of Nigeria (EXMAN). We presented what we had and what we wanted to achieve to them all. On the basis of that, we actually got endorsement from those five bodies. But we said that was not enough and like I said, we don’t want to start comparing with Nigeria awards, we want to compare with the international ones. So, we went out and sought out some accreditation agency in the UK to say okay, this is what we wanted to do.

At this point, the rating agency subjected all our systems to all the checks, they asked questions and we answered all the questions. They went to our website and checked. Based on that, they gave us the starting point, in terms of our accreditation. So, when you look at all the marketing awards in the country, Ours is the only one that has such accreditation.

How did you get accreditation before the first edition, and why did the accreditation agency not rate you based on the quality of the first edition?

That cannot be correct. And I’ll explain now. Let’s forget about the award and look at something close to us. For example, if I have money today and I want to establish a university, how will the National University Commission accredit the proposed institution? would they say I should go and start a university before the accreditation? No. They will look at what is the structure, what is the curriculum, where is the funding. These are certain criteria they will check. This is the same process in getting the required accreditation for the award.

Can you please shed more light on the Awards Trust Mark accreditation for NMA?

The Awards Trust Mark scheme is an international accreditation programme run by The Independent Awards Standards Council, based in the UK.  The goal is, enhancing trust between those entering awards schemes, and the organisations running them. It is based around a voluntary code of conduct that awards organisers commit to.

To get accredited, the IASC carries out a rigorous evaluation and investigation of awards processes and systems. They test for every element of transparency and credibility and only accredits awards that tick all the boxes.

Getting the accreditation is very important for us. Nigerian Marketing Awards® becomes the first in Nigeria and the entire region to get such accreditation. Thus, it puts our awards in the international limelight and reinforces our vision of becoming the biggest and most credible marketing awards in Nigeria.

Our findings revealed that at the close of entries, NMA recorded a 40% increase over last year (from 106 to 147), quite impressive but the question is what do you think informed this?

I don’t want to dwell so much on that because the judges have exclusive rights over some issues but I will say we have gained more traction between last year now if the feedback we got after the first edition is anything to go by. Basically, we really set out to have an award that will compete in the global space. We want to give Nigeria an award that will be on the list globally when you check the website. To me, I don’t think we should continue to remain big giants in Nigeria and then when you go outside, you will say, I wonder which award is that? Gradually, that’s where I want to head to. So far, I’m fully impressed that from the humble beginning last year, the brand is getting to have roots, and I think people are getting to understand it. It’s a new style, a new method.

Looking back, will you say your background contributed in any way to what you are doing now?

I think this is where we started the conversation. First of all, I am a marketing man, I have been a marketing man all my life, and that’s already a distinction and as a marketing man while working in Nigerian Breweries, I had opportunities to represent my company at both local and international awards events. So, I know what it means to prepare for an award. I can tell you, doing a good job is just a little part of winning an award. Now, putting together your entry is a completely different ball game. And that’s where a whole lot of people, whether it is a music award, or awards in the creative and the rest of it, a lot of people get it wrong because they say they deserve the award because of what they thought they did well. Nobody deserves an award. You win an award because you’ve done something and you’ve met the criteria set by the organizers of that award. So, for me, my experience both as a marketing man and all the pieces of work we did and the different awards I had participated in before starting this journey contributed to what I’m doing now. Let me cite an example; X3M Ideas owned by a Nigerian -Steve Babaeko recently won the Cannes Award, the first agency to win from Nigeria in 70 years. It instantly resonated with everybody in Nigeria that we won. It confers a kind of honour and respect on not only the advertising industry but the whole country. 

In line with my background, the main motivation for Nigerian Marketing Awards is the need to have in Nigeria, an international quality awards that is reputed for transparency and credibility. Even with the very few already existing awards, the marketing community was already getting awards weary because of general doubts about the quality of some of the awards. Quality in transparency and credibility, quality in execution. But the truth is that we do not even have enough awards for the size of the Nigerian market. But Nigerian Marketing Awards is not just coming to add to the numbers, it is designed to uplift the overall quality of marketing awards in Nigeria.