Enang: Membership, Learning and Development Will Drive Growth in NIMN

President of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, Idorenyen Enang, in this interview with Raheem Akingbolu speaks on the various efforts being made by the leadership of the institute to earn more respect for the professional body. Excerpts

You have consistently assured stakeholders that you would turn things round for the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) to enhance more respect for members. Can you give insight to steps you are taking to achieve the goal?

In answering this, I think it’s necessary to touch on what informed my decision to aspire for the post of president in the first place. It all started in 2016 when I first thought of leading the institute.  One day, I was going through the annual report of the  NIMN and there I saw that the Institute made a loss.  I screamed.  And as a fellow, I said, come on.  I looked at the top line, it was over 200-something million. And then to come with a loss?  What are we doing?  So, at that point, I said to myself, you can only fix a problem like this only at the top. So, I requested for the past financial statements to look at it. And I just said to myself, there’s a possibility this place is not well run.  So let me go in as president.  And I indicated my interest.  Of course, there were guidelines. One of the guidelines or clauses in the guidelines was that you should have served in the council for at least two years or thereabout. I tried to challenge that position and briefed my Lawyer to give me a clear interpretation if the council had the right. He came back and told me the council had the right. It was at that stage I withdrew.

But 2020, again, there was a lot of pressure on me to come and reconsider coming back as a principal officer. By that time, I wasn’t keen again as I wanted  to just focus on my business and then do what I love doing, which is building people and doing all of that.  Anyway, fast forward, I got in. The elections were very tough, especially for the position I contested -first vice-president.

You had the incumbent that was running again.  You had two other former council members who were running and yours sincerely.  That was the first time I’d been opened to the politics of NIMN. I’m going this far to let you see that truly, I’m not an accidental president.

What you are saying is that you were prepared from day one?

Yes, whatever you see that I’m doing now were things I conceived deep down in my spirit and I thought the institute deserved more than what it was getting. I remember my campaign was just one line; resetting the NIMN.  The NIMN needs to be reset.  I pushed the message both offline and online. I went to LinkedIn and I said; if you know anybody, instead of marketing, ask them to vote for me. In less than one week, I had over 21,000 views.

There were so many likes and shares across the world.  The big question was, “why the hell are you vice president? So, my international reputation came to bear and people were wondering why I would go as first Vice-President.

And I said, yes, I had to.  That’s the position that was opened.  By the time we went into the elections, God granted me victory.  With the cooperation of the then President, First of all, I did a survey to understand why people were not in marketing associations, not just NIMN.  You’d be shocked that 20% of the respondents were the only ones in the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), as it was then known. When you drill it down, you would see that the 20 per cent were those that were members because it’s mandatory. My findings revealed that over 55 per cent of people were just not interested. 

But unfortunately, my one year has lapsed. Before I could finish, the presidency was open.  And then the call resurfaced again -everybody came on my head that I had to run for president. I told those who came to me that our agreement was for me to be a principal officer, which I had done successfully.  I knew the enormity of the responsibility if I was going to take the presidency.

So, I agreed reluctantly. So, in that first term, I set out those priorities and then we started the journey. It’s not been an easy ride. The first term is gone. Now, we are on with the second and by God’s grace the last term.

What are your priorities this time?

Recently, I met with all the new council members, the chairmen of committees and staff. Also, I invited three guests, two fellows and our legal counsel. We were all in the room to talk about the future.  I told them this is our 20th anniversary.  When we are 25, which is five years’ time, what picture do they see?

I gave everybody four questions to come back and be ready to have conversations.  For me, the thing was building the next frontier. As we speak, we are in discussions with various global institutes for possible collaboration. All these are being done to enhance the profession and build marketers globally, Nigerians inclusive.

Secondly, we already have a standing arrangement with the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), where if you are a member of ARCON, you can become a member of NIMN. You will have to go through certain interventions and vice versa. We have that in place to be able to cross-pollinate, because we are more or less in the same industry.  Therefore, where I am now is; I said to myself and to the entire team, by 2025, by the grace of God, God keeping me alive, June 2025, I will leave this seat as president.  There are two big priorities for me; membership and learning and development.

Can you please break this down?

Under membership, we will go into a formal tiering approach, corporate, individual and institutions. For once, the students and lecturers and other institutions we have partnership with will now come under a certain umbrella.  But to achieve this,  we must destroy the current fabric that we call chapters to enhance growth.  They don’t add any value. Many stakeholders will not like this but to me they are like mere social clubs. There’s no value.  So that has to be turned into a new spectrum.  And the new spectrum is inviting, creating an invitation to the entire body. When you think about it in a global scale, we are part of the creative industry.  The hub of it is marketing.  Marketing is the creative industry.  That is where the oil sits.  I have started conversations. I have visited Abuja, the trademark registration office in Abuja.

Could the institute’s recent partnership with the Lagos Business School (LBS) be part of these plans?

Yes, that falls under learning and development, but it goes beyond that because it goes beyond what we can acquire within Nigeria. But now we have entered into a partnership with the Lagos Business School (LBS) to drive research on data, diaspora investment and capacity building that will enhance businesses and economic growth. The marketing industry contributes largely to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country and marketing as a profession is sitting on a huge estate.

Sincerely speaking, the partnership with LBS is strategic, as it will enhance the entire business ecosystem and the economy at large. We are setting up what you would call NIMN diaspora and we are already putting a framework together. It’s about how our members and also marketers of Nigerian origin and African origin who are in diaspora, will be able to find a way to impact those back home.

This partnership would transform the marketing profession in Nigeria, drive professionalism and ethical ways of doing business in the areas of research and capacity building, which will drive the growth that is desperately needed in the nation’s economy.

Those who have left the country are gaining knowledge and transferring it to Nigeria, which is also drawing foreign partnership and investment into the country in the area of trade, collaboration, skills development and education.

On a final note, the field of marketing is really at a stage in Nigeria and Africa where it is about to explode in a positive direction.