Nigerian Breweries, NIMN, an umpire, and the ostrich in the mirror (Opinion)

If I remember correctly, in all my years as a brands and communications journalist, the only story I dwelt on for a long period was that between Prima Garnet on the one hand, and Guinness Nigeria Plc, Scan Group, and its promoter, Bharat Thakrar and Airtel Nigeria, on the other. I stayed quite long on the story because I felt uncomfortable with foreign agencies and influences riding roughshod over the industry in Nigeria.

Also read: Nigerian Breweries blames modest profit earning on economic crunch

I have long moved on from that full-time reportorial career, shut BRANDish, the platform that enabled that, and moved into other businesses in and around media and marketing communications. Because I love writing, I created my blog, to enable me to continue to have reason to express myself and aggregate my views and perspective on wide-ranging issues that are not limited to brands and marketing.

So when I picked up the story about Nigerian breweries and the culpable marketing miscalculation with the launch of Goldberg Black, it was just my way of lending my voice to a debate many of us in the journalist side of marketing communication work extremely hard to avoid, for either lack of the necessary insight or the more existentially devastating one – fear of patronage.

But as soon as the first story went out, it became clear, from the feedback flooding my email, my phone, and my WhatsApp account, that for the sake of sanity in the market, there has to be a follow-up story. From one follow-up story, the need for more stories continued to arise and information after revealing information continued to compel a deeper dive into the business of Nigerian Breweries that resulted in an unprecedented loss of more than N57 billion for the 9 months ended January – September 2023.

To validate a few issues that emerged from the feedback I had received from the second article, I sent an email to Emmanuel Oriakhi, Marketing Director of Nigerian Breweries. I was surprised that he was able to respond in less than two hours. His response necessitated another question, which also drew another quick response, but this time, he became combative and threatened to involve the legal department of his company over a discussion that was going on between only the two of us in the secured two-way communication of electronic mail.

With the locust of ineffective marketing ravaging them, the people at Nigerian Breweries embraced Agenmonmen’s NMA with open arms. The retiring NIMN helmsman had retired from NB before finding a home in NIMN and therefore understands the headaches afflicting the company, and the need to paper over the wounds to hide the gangrene from the public.

Also read: NIMN faces criticism, fights dwindling membership as young marketing professionals seek alternative

I decided to leave the discussion at this point, but before signing off, Mr Oriakhi also hinted that he had detailed some people in his department to contact me for a meeting, and while I have to admit I have received a couple of calls, I felt someone should have told the Marketing Director that the meetings such as the one he was proposing were not the type I like attending, especially given the condescending tone of his proposal.

Nigerian Breweries is a company every Nigerian should be proud of, not just for its origins, but also for the impact it has had on various aspects of life. From entertainment to leisure to creativity and then down to the support of culture, it has made its impact. It was mostly because of the decent allocation that this company gives to marketing that its brands were able to achieve top status when it did.

The problem however started when product launches and other marketing activities became more inclined to pop culture than market engagement. The marketing department began to live like people who either won lotteries or suddenly inherited stupendous wealth. You may be right to say that those handling the marketing oars at NB did inherit a legacy of great marketing brain-works and foot-works. It is difficult to forget the strides of Felix Ohiwerei, Festus Odimegwu, and all the great people of yore who spent their days at the company “living the brand.”

Sadly, the drivers of the vehicle today rather than live the brand, are living off the brand. Let us tell this story with numbers. Between June 2022 to June 2023, Nigerian Breweries voted N165 billion for marketing. This represented an increase of N10 billion from what was spent for the same period, 2021 to 2022.

You will understand this better when we explain this with some primitive analogies. At N165 billion. It means that Nigerian Breweries allocated N825 (eight hundred and twenty-five naira to evangelise every Nigerian, including the millions who for one reason or another, do not drink beer. Yet it delivered a loss of N57 billion. The numbers have been consistently unflattering over the past three years. Miraculously, nobody has thought of shrinking the marketing budget. Instead, the sum of N10 billion was added, perhaps as an incentive to continue to dig the hole that would perhaps eventually bury this bleeding conglomerate.

Smug in their complacency, and inspired by their near-infinite budget, Nigerian Breweries decided to start playing politics with their brands. Any person who has observed what this brand has been up to, recently, will suspect that the sanctimonious absurdities of mainstream Nigerian politics have afflicted the giant brewers. You will be familiar with the Nigerian situation where terrorists and bandits would be ravaging a community, yet the security agencies would be in the news proclaiming that the situation was under control and calling on law-abiding citizens to “go about their normal businesses without fear or hindrance.”

While the numbers tanked, the marketing department was doing its best to pretend all was well, and they soon found the vehicle to demonstrate this before a shocked Nigerian marketing public.

Having done his time as President of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NINM), Tony Agenmonmen, a former Marketing Manager in Nigerian Breweries decided to leave an indelible legacy for the person who was going to succeed him, in the person of Idorenyin “Idy” Enang. This legacy was the institution of an annual award programme, known as the Nigerian Marketing Awards.

Even with the plaque fatigue besetting this country what with the surfeit of awards and recognitions sprouting all over the place, an addition from a “credible” institution such as the NIMN was not going to be unwelcome, more so when there are legions of individuals and businesses who derive heavy PR utility value from using those awards for window dressing.

With the locust of ineffective marketing ravaging them, the people at Nigerian Breweries embraced Agenmonmen’s NMA with open arms. The retiring NIMN helmsman had retired from NB before finding a home in NIMN and therefore understands the headaches afflicting the company, and the need to paper over the wounds to hide the gangrene from the public.

Information available to us from sources familiar with the awards has it that Nigerian Breweries allegedly bought into the Nigerian Marketing Awards project with the sum of N100 million in 2022. I heard that for the 2023 awards, NB, perhaps under pressure from its festering wounds which luck and fate have refused to heal, allegedly decided to donate only N25 million. That was also a lot of money, and a lot of value too, depending on what one chooses to consider valuable. For her generosity, Nigerian Breweries carted away (I don’t like journalese, but I have no option but to use one here) 80 percent of the awards on offer.

And this was a project that was touted to be transparent by Agenmonmen himself

While promoting the 2023 awards, Agenmonmen wrote on his Facebook account, “When we introduced the Nigerian Marketing Awards® last year, our commitment was to establish a platform that stands out for its transparency and credibility. We aimed to set a benchmark comparable to the best awards globally. Over the past two editions, we have diligently upheld this commitment, and it remains our steadfast promise to the Nigerian Marketing Community.”

Let us put this statement to the test; NMA, at the end of the 2023 awards proclaimed Life Continental lager Beer as the best alcoholic brand of the year and overall brand of the year.

Two awards for good suffering Life Beer, a regional brand that followed southeasterners to stray into Lagos and other markets! If Life Beer is the brand of the year, tell me where the likes of MTN, Airtel, Flutterwave, Paystack, Andela, Interswitch, Konga, Jumia, iROKOtv, Farmcrowdy, Kobo360, Wakanow, PiggyVest, SystemSpecs, Kudi and other tech companies that have revolutionized businesses in the country?

But Agenmonmen and NMA were not done; They found a way to crown the Brand Manager of Maltina as the rising star of marketing of the year, and you will ask yourself; for dong what exactly? For making Maltina the “preferable when nothing else is available” of the malt drinks segment?

There were other winners from Nigerian Breweries, and in the end, one would know that the whole thing was to choreograph the company itself into taking the big award, and that was what happened; Nigerian Breweries was given the “Marketing Company of the Year” award.

We all know of the Fitch Ratings in the United States. It is not owned by the financial services regulator in that country, and it also exists side-by-side with other rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard &Poor’s. We have the Forbes 500 and Fortune 5,000, owned by a newspaper organisations.

While the employees of NB were at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos collecting plaques from NIMN, the books of the company were bleeding, as shown in the bottom line numbers the company tried to hide from its stakeholders. The loss recorded for the nine months ended January to September 2023 was hefty, and it one factors the quality of engagement vis-à-vis the inflow from the last quarter of the year, shareholders will have to approach the full-year announcement with unprecedented trepidation.

Just as God, as recorded in the Bible, conducted a review of His works of creation and felt it was so good before he proclaimed, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” The owners of NMA in their bid to have total control of the market, decided to eat up competition to foist monopoly. What NIMN wants to do is to take hold of all ratings that lead up to annual awards in the Nigerian marketing space and assume it is the only credible platform for such ratings.

This is not true and is even embarrassing to the persons of Tony and Idy Enang, the forces behind NIMN. A regulatory body such as NIMN should not be involved in industry ratings. Their core duty should be setting of the standard operating procedures (SPOs) for the entire industry, monitoring and sanctioning errant practitioners, and protecting and preserving the codes of practice. Awards, ratings, and rankings are the exclusive preserves of players outside the regulators. In some countries, some of these platforms have grown to become huge spinoff subsidiaries.

We all know of the Fitch Ratings in the United States. It is not owned by the financial services regulator in that country, and it also exists side-by-side with other rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard &Poor’s. We have the Forbes 500 and Fortune 5,000, owned by a newspaper organisations.

In Nigeria, it is not the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) that rewards excellence in advertising, it is the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) that owns the project and conducts it through its special purpose vehicle, the Lagos Ideas and Advertising Festival (LAIF). In the financial sector, Bode Agusto, the sole proprietor of Agusto Consulting debuted Nigeria’s first credit rating agency, known as Agusto Ratings. The Central Bank of Nigeria did not have to go after him because it was not the business of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

When a regulator becomes an awardee and a rating company, it exposes itself to the vagaries of industry politics, and this was exposed in the 2023 awards where Agenmonmen took to social media to celebrate the Brand of the Year award given to Life Beer by NIMN/NMA. Tony could not hide his filial relationship with this brand in this announcement. I am not sure Idy Enang would be able to contain his joy were Samsung to be recognized (although I heard the parting of ways was not as friendly as it should have been), having worked in the Nigerian office for a period.

We may even ask this question; what if a foreign company decided to rate and reward brands playing in Nigeria, the same way Fitch did in the early 2000s, and The Banker Magazine was, and is still, doing? Would NIMN go after these foreign rating companies who may collect all the data they need remotely from their headquarters abroad without stepping foot on Nigerian soil? Would NIMN go after them?

If NIMN is sincere about being the sole giver of awards and allocator of ratings, I think the first set of people it should go after are the AAAN and the Lagos Chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), which does the LaPriGA). This is because Advertising and PR are marketing functions and should fall under the control of NIMN. Yes, NIMN should work towards bringing AAAN and NIPF under its control.

Having survived a prolonged atrocious battle of attrition by elements that ran two different factions and charters of the Institute for many years, the present crop of leaders should not rubbish the great works that the late Lugard Aimiuwu did to unite the two factions into one. I do not know if either Tony Agenmonmen or Idy Enang was coming close to the institute those days, but as a reporter, I know the extent of work that John Ajayi, publisher of Marketing Edge did towards the unification of the charter. I know because we nicknamed him NIMN then because of the passion with which he worked to have a single, united National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria.

It is even possible for Agenmonmen to take his NMA away from NIMN, and create some sort of partnership that enables them to give as many awards to their friends in Nigerian Breweries as they like. The money would still be made, but I can guarantee that no plaque, however gilded, would be able to turn a laggard into a star performer. Only market-rousing strategies and engagements can do that.

Ikem Okuhu

Okuhu is a journalist, a Public Relations professional, brand strategist and teacher.