It wouldn’t be a lie to say that Akin Adeoya has seen it all. Today, he has to his credit successful businesses, a happy home, good health and he is also doing what he likes, writing. In this interview, he spoke about his businesses, life as a journalist and how many thought he would never have a successful family.
Your profile is quite impressive; do you agree with those who say that you are a successful man?
Well, it feels very good to be perceived as successful. However, it’s all about perception. I think success should be measured in terms of what the person became. If you ask me I’ll say yes, I thank God for my modest achievements, but I can assure you that as far as I am concerned, I have not done that which I regard as my primary duty, I have scratched the surface, but I think I am just about to get there.
What do you refer to when you say your primary duty?
By nature, I am a thinking person, a reasoning person, someone who likes to play around with ideas, thoughts, and things. I like to put pen to paper. Despite the fact that I have considerable skills in that direction, I don’t think I have exploited that natural skill well enough and I think that’s a waste. So, I’m hoping and praying that I still have enough time, I am really dedicating myself to exploiting those skills, not just in terms of writing books of creative works, but also applying what I regard as my natural skills in the area of innovation, and coming up with problem-solving ideas.
How would you measure the successes of M2 and Marketing Mix, two of your now rested companies?
M2 was a publication that was targeted at the marketing industry. There was also Marketing Mix which was a PR company; both were very successful, I must say. The model of M2 which we ran at that time was a printed publication circulated throughout the marketing industry, but we voted to discontinue it.
Why was the decision taken?
Even though it was very popular, we thought that it was too narrow to carry our dreams forward. We realised that a publication that is targeted at the Nigerian marketing industry can’t be limited in scope or ambitions, in terms of the numbers we were covering. So, despite its perceptual success in terms of circulation, making it a commercial success became a challenge because of the numbers. The Nigerian media buying industry, in my view, has not become as sophisticated as its counterparts out there. In America or in Great Britain, for instance, where we have very matured media-buying operations agencies and organisations, you do not put specialised publications in the same pool as general-interest publications, you cannot put a magazine like M2 that was targeting a particular industry, trade publication basically, in the same pool you put the Guardian, Thisday or Punch. But when we go and pitch for advertising business from some of these organisations, what they throw in our face are measurement indexes of national dailies. They tell us that our numbers are not impressive enough, that is why they would rather put their adverts in the Punch or The Guardian, which show a serious ignorance of the issue at stake. That a trade publication is not competing with the general interest publication and cannot have the same numbers as the general area publication should be common sense. A trade publication is targeted at people operating within that industry, so if you are going to measure it, you have to measure it against its peers, against other trade publications, and sometimes perhaps against trade publications in the same industry. If you are the only fish swimming in that water, then that means you are supposed to be a gem, an asset to the industry. For many years, we were the only marketing publication that was published weekly, not monthly, not occasionally but every week. We circulated copies of M2 to subscribers both within and outside Lagos. And yet somebody wants to compare us with Guardian, Punch or ThisDay. Because media agencies don’t have that knowledge or that understanding to put us in a separate category and give us our due, we suffered greatly from getting the kind of business that we ought to have gotten.
Are the media agencies more informed today?
That’s a question for a seminar session; I think progressively they ought to be. But you see, we have decided that that is not our challenge, that’s not our problem, we are not a media rating agency and our publishing ambition has gone beyond dealing with just the marketing industry. We redefined our focus in terms of publishing and journalism to target the consumers because indeed we see ourselves as people who ought to be writing about products consumers are using, who want to advise consumers, who want to be Nigeria’s first consumer brand and pros review publication, and we are doing that with Cobra Review which is first in Nigeria, first in West Africa. We are not there yet, but we know that the focus we have is very unique, it stands out and we think we would get there. This time around we are not printing hard copies and sharing to everyone, the dynamics and the fundamentals of the business has changed forever, so basically we are available online free to millions of people who may want to read the publication and it’s growing gradually, organically online, and we think a time will come when every consumer who wants value for his money, when every consumer who wants to know the safety of the product he or she is using, when any consumer who is interested in the product information, will not be able to do without us before they make a buying decision, ultimately we would be doing business with everybody.
Earlier you said that you will be going back to your constituency, is that Cobra Review?
Yes, this is my constituency because this is journalism, this is how I started my career as a writer, I wrote in a Newspaper house, ThisDay. I broke off because I needed to make some money, yes; I have no apology saying that. So, I focused my mind on PR and some other businesses, but that time is over now effectively.
Are you saying that you would turn down a lucrative Public Relation brief?
If somebody gives me a PR brief now, I am not going to turn it down but I am going to be very expensive and I am going to have all kinds of terms and conditions that you will really need to need me for you to go ahead and give me that brief. I think I have crossed all the lines having done some of the world’s 50 greatest brands for 13 years. I did MTN, Unilever and some of the biggest brands successfully. Having achieved that level of excellence in that area, I don’t think there are any other hills to climb. All I have now are just assignments to be executed in that area. So what I am interested in now is the consumer’s interest, the mass of millions out there who are being exploited, who are being cheated and who have nobody to stand up for them. We are going to stand up for the consumer, we are not going to compromise, we are going to publish what needs to be published, we are going to say the truth. In fact, our mission is to say the truth, and what we are doing is in the name of the consumer.
Don’t you think that your reviews will affect prospective clients?
Again, the dynamics have changed. When we were publishing M2, I wrote an article about a major multinational company in the GSM sector in Nigeria, I did not publish that article in a magazine; I published it in ThisDay and in the Guardian and it was a good article. The people in the organisation found out I was the one who wrote the article and decided to punish me. They found out I owned M2 and blacklisted the magazine permanently. Those are the kind of cheap blackmail we were exposed to and of course, it is unethical. If you feel what I have written is wrong, you have your own right to reply, it’s free. Nobody paid me to publish that article, indeed you have a right to reply. Sometimes, when we write an article that is not so positive about some brand or companies, they would say cancel their subscription and cancel any other contract we have with them and let them go to hell. We were subject to all kind of ridiculous media blackmail, but we pushed through despite it all. But now the name of the game has changed, we now have access to millions of people who are going to read us and those millions of people also have access to us, and sooner or later they will realise that things that they cannot get from the mass media, they are going to get from us because we are also accessible, we are also a mass media, we are on the internet. You might ask what about the advertising business that we might lose? But don’t forget we said we are going to be writing the truth about brands, If we say the truth about a particular brand and they get angry and they say they won’t patronise us, that’s their headache, we are not interested in doing business with compromised organisations, or compromised brands or organisations who don’t have ethics or who don’t have the interest of consumers at heart. What we do, we do in the name of the consumer, and so the consumer is our number one interest and focus. These multinationals, you can count them on your fingers, but nobody can count the consumers. Why are the multinationals so powerful, because the consumers are buying into what they have to sell. So what we have to do is to ensure that we find a way to get the consumer to buy into what we have to sell when the consumers buy into what we have to sell in their millions, nobody can stop us.
The Marathon you did several years ago was a landmark event, how did you manage it?
We have to give all the glory to God, I think that was 10 or 11 years ago. The idea of the Police Marathon was originally called ‘The Race Against Crime’ because there was an organisation called the EFCC under Nuhu Ribadu, which was making a lot of waves. So, the idea was not a 2008 idea, I think it was a 2004 idea. At that time, Mr. Olorunyomi was Chief of Staff to the chairman of EFCC and we were close to him, he was a big brother to us, we used to go and see him in his office. He encouraged us to come up with good ideas. So, I wrote the proposal ‘The Race Against Crime’, that Nigerians should be mobilised to run against crime and everybody would carry the banner, to race against crime and we could start the campaign to support what EFCC was doing. It eventually didn’t happen with the EFCC, but we got an opportunity to push the idea with the police and it was a success.
A lot of people know you by your businesses, who really is Akin Adeoya?
Simple, easygoing, strong view, I think I have a very original mind, if I don’t have another thing, I have that. I love life; I don’t believe in over materialism, I don’t believe people should go to great lengths just because they want to make money; because they want to live a certain life. I am also very positive.
Tell us about growing up as a child?
That is a book on its own. I had pieces and bits of my childhood in places like Sapele, Lagos, and a few other places. My most powerful influence growing up would be my mum; the most interesting thing for me would be my mum. My mum influenced my interest and my ultimate career and also gave me what I regard as my strong moral standing as an individual. Yes, I love life, yes I love to spend money, but I would not cross that line. She was a strong character, what you can call a woman of caliber, hardworking, simple, and focused. This was also a woman who also influenced my early interest in reading, in storytelling, she must have done some reading herself because she would tell us the stories of Macbeth, tell us about King Solomon’s Mines and so on and so forth. These were for me the most exciting things.
Did you have a life-changing encounter at any point of your life?
In 1981, I was sent to the village for one year by my parents, I was supposed to be in boarding school then, but one of my uncles said no, that I couldn’t go to the boarding school, that I was too stubborn. But my parents have a policy of sending their children away when they are about to get into secondary school, so they were not going to allow me to stay with them. Since they could not put me in boarding school, they decided to send me to the village to go and stay with old folks. I lived there for one year, and then every Saturday we would trek about five to six kilometers or more to the farm and then trek back. I witnessed the real traditional village life, the streams, the festivals, the endless pounded yam, and those gave me a tremendous appreciation of our culture as a people. These are just some of the memories I have treasured as a child. As I said, it’s a book.
Is yours a complete book, a success story?
Overall, I see myself as a success story, if you go by the general indices of success. I can’t say I am poor, I think I did well, I have employed hundreds and hundreds of people, I have established businesses that pay taxes to the government. The most important thing is yet undone, so let’s be on the lookout. I have also had a successful marriage and a successful family, that’s one thing that many people thought I would not be able to have. Last year, I celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary. The family is going strong, the family is happy, I am happy, everybody is happy. And that is a big achievement.
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