The Sun News On-line| Ceo Magazine

In the Eastern part of the country, Rocana Nigeria Limited has carved a niche for itself in outdoor advertising. For 33 years, Rocana has been playing a kingly role in the region and dominating its advertising landscape. In the ‘80’s when other agencies were still using wooden billboards, Rocana introduced steel billboards that marked the beginning of a revolution in the industry in the country.

Today, Rocana has not only conquered the outdoor advertising sub-sector, East of the Niger, it has also spread its tentacles beyond the region just as it is moving a notch higher by going into production of printers and packaging materials.

Also, Rocana recently secured the franchise to add the new Face of Imo by constructing 50 ultra-modern bus shelters in the heartland state. According to Oji, apart from the shelters providing shade for pedestrians, it would afford corporate bodies in Imo opportunity to advertise their products.

In this exclusive interview with Daily Sun at the Enugu head office of the company, its Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Mr Robert O. Oji, disclosed that Rocana would be relocating to a new exquisite corporate headquarters before the end of the year from where the company would now carry out a global onslaught by doing jobs internationally in the area of advertising production.
Looking ahead, the Rocana boss told Daily Sun that his company in the next five years would be doing packaging for the whole of the Eastern Nigeria, spreading to Lagos, Abuja and other parts of the country, saying that at Rocana they have got the required expertise, stamina and experience, needed to rule the advertising world. Excerpts:

Background
My name is Robert Oji. I am the CEO and Managing Director of Rocana Nigeria Limited. Rocana Nigeria Limited was incorporated in 1975 and from inception, we have been in the production of advertising materials, printing and eventually ventured into outdoor advertising. We got our membership in 1984 with OAN; APCON in 1988; the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations in 1985. We have our head office in Enugu . We also have branches in Lagos, Aba, Port Harcourt and planning to go to Abuja .

Journeying into the advertising world
It has been rough, very turbulent, but the experience is worthwhile, the experiences we have had within this period are all happy experiences because we have excelled in outdoor, and have equally started to improve on outdoor production materials like flexes, vinyl, and fabrication of outdoor structures, among others. Rocana Nigeria Lmited also belongs to other international bodies such as CJ, the United States Sign Council and all these bodies are responsible for developing ethics that guide outdoor advertising. Rocana is equally developing a new corporate head office at Emene in Enugu State . We hope to pack into the new place before the end of this year God’s willing. So, it has been quite an experience over the period, but very slowly we are steadily moving forward.

Why I went into outdoor advertising
What informed my decision was that we were already producing billboards for Monarch Breweries. Monarch was established at the Ninth Mile, Enugu in the ‘70’s and it started operations in the ‘80’s; so, we started doing some printing jobs, doing some posters and other medium-scale billboards for them. We found out that it was really challenging working for them and that challenge pushed us up into serious outdoor advertising. And that was when we started seeking recognition from APCON, NIPR so that we will be able to handle the new areas because Rocana decided to be in the East ab initio; we don’t want to go to Lagos because we know that it is already saturated, many people are there in Lagos, so, we have carved a niche for ourselves, saying that we would handle all the jobs within the East. And when Monarch was bought over by Nigerian Breweries, it was a launching pad with which we moved straight to Lagos . It was then that we started getting many other jobs from the Nigerian Breweries and other agencies that were into outdoor advertising that we could represent well in the eastern part of the country. That was our policy and this policy paid off well.

Why our other clients queued behind Monarch
They saw consistency, they saw reliability, they saw the strength in handling jobs within our area, they saw that response time for production, installation, hoisting of billboards was there, as well as the response time for maintenance which was an advantage for somebody who is over here in the East handling their jobs. We took advantage of all these.

Challenges
Actually, we have many challenges. In the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, we were not having the challenges that we were faced with in the ‘90’s and from 2000 till now we are having extra challenges ranging from multiple taxation by government agencies; local governments will demand taxes; internal revenue which is normally federal and state’s; the Ministry of Environment and several youths organizations in the states also impose levies . So, by the time you complete a job, you would have paid through your nose. This does not make for a healthy development of outdoor advertising and the government is not helping matters by not restricting anybody, so anybody jumps on outdoor to get his cut.

Regulating location of billboards
OAN has its regulations and APCON has its too, the regulations are there, they are printed and handed over to any member. The local governments have their regulations and the Ministry of Environment is coming up with its regulations; regulation changes, it has been revolving from inception till now. The local governments will allocate site to you and they say that the site should maintain 200 metres and by the time you install your billboard, assuming Rocana is in the East, assuming we take up a virgin site and somebody is coming from Lagos and some other persons have interest in giving him the same site and you have already given him your site list, so that he can give you the job, and he transfers it to his brother who is coming from Lagos. And then, he will come to that particular site you have described for them in your site list and hand it over to them and they will now come there to install their billboard, making the place to become a cluster.

So, the problem is from outdoor advertising practitioners, the problem is from agencies who try to patronize their people, friends and brothers from Lagos; the problem is from the local governments who permit them because they have the stipulations. Like the local government will authorize kiosks everywhere, all over town, likewise they will authorize every other thing, just pay them money, you will have site, it doesn’t matter who you are offending, whether you are stepping on anybody’s toes, they will just give you the site, but this will boomerang at the end of the day, the government doesn’t like it, the government is coming up with policies to impose control as we can’t control ourselves.

Relevance of outdoor advertising
The relevance of outdoor advertising cannot be over-emphasized because outdoor advertising has become a media tool to be reckoned with. One advantage it has is that in radio advertising, if there is no light you will use your money to buy battery, you can’t listen to the radio all the time because mostly there is no electricity supply; the same problem is applicable to television. That is for the electronic media; for the newspapers, Nigerians are not a reading public, they are not usually interested in reading, most of them who read, read for one purpose or the other, either for political reason or when they are looking for an advert to get a job or other things.

Besides, per capita income in Nigeria is too low for people to pick up the newspapers because of the poor economy. So, there are so many things inhibiting the media channels and that is why outdoor is the sure bet. In fact, from our statistics, we noticed that one billboard could be seen by both pedestrians, motorists and other commuters 24 hours 365 days a year; so, it does not choose any audience, every audience is entitled to view it as it is out there on the road. So, outdoor has a very big advantage and is very significant in the Nigerian situation now, that is why everybody is rushing to outdoor advertising.

Competition
One thing is sure; Rocana is coping because Rocana is a pioneer in outdoor advertising business in the Eastern part of Nigeria before other people joined. And those people who are coming from Lagos , that is, other outdoor advertising companies who are claiming to be national or international come to cluster the whole area. Other outdoor companies that are now coming up in the Eastern part of the country are even claiming that they are national. So, for Rocana, we have an advantage because we are maintaining only the billboards within our locality, within the East which will take us only three hours to go and render service either by the notice of the clients who get to inform us and we rush to the place within the next three hours; from here to Port Harcourt is about three hours, from here to Calabar is about three hours, so is Benin and Makurdi; so, we are on the job,we respond rapidly.

Quacks in outdoor advertising and the regulatory bodies
That is quite true and that is where the trouble lies; both the government and OAN, APCON are not doing much on the regulatory aspect of outdoor advertising because I have travelled abroad and I belong to international bodies. I have seen the way it is done abroad; it’s not the way it is done in Nigeria . Anybody who left school yesterday will come into outdoor, anybody who works for you will take off in the next one or two months and is into outdoor. He is competing with you, he is paying the local government and giving money under the table to boys in the agency and they will give him jobs. So, it is a difficult situation we are in actually.

Our innovations in billboard signs
Rocana actually in the ‘80’s produced steel boards when other outdoor companies were still using wooden board. We were then the first company to introduce steel boards to all our billboards in our areas of operation. Rocana later introduced Unipole, there are two, three agencies who started Unipole in Lagos before Rocana took over and we have so many Unipoles in our areas of operation.

Rocana is now working with foreign partners to get some other high-powered billboards like neon, we are doing neon now, we are doing revolving signs, we are trying to get in a digital signboard for which we must get a land, and, of course, we are now buying up some land where we can install the board permanently and then get a power generating set for it because they require regular power and we are also researching into solar energy; the kind of solar system they have now is not efficient, we are researching into it to know people who can give us more efficient solar system that can power the kind of billboards we have in mind. There are many new developments that Rocana is bringing into outdoor for better innovation of the system which some of the new people in outdoor may not be able to catch up with until later years.

Economy
It has affected us drastically because our debt margin now is high. All the agencies that we have worked for are owing us a lot and it’s like we are just living from hand to mouth for now, but the fact that we are looking forward to a better tomorrow is the reason we are still investing in these high-powered billboards, we are still going to the banks, we are paying interests and the banks are mostly threatening us over loan. We are really having it hard, harder than any other business because the local government is on us, the Environment Ministry, the youths, so, we are really having it tough, it is turbulent like I said initially.

Our other areas in advertising
That’s what I told you earlier, we are now moving forward despite all the challenges in outdoor; we are using vinyl, flexes; we are printing on them, we buy vinyl and flexes and print on them for our other colleagues who are in the industry. In 2005\2006, we ventured into large format and last year, we bought 15 large format printing machines as against the three we bought in 2006 and we have sold seven to Benin, Abuja and Port Harcourt. And my last trip last month to China has even exposed us the more that we are being offered to produce the printers here in Nigeria , here in Enugu State so that we can sell to the whole of Africa because the Chinese saw the potentialities in us and our seriousness.

So, they now asked us to get 10 electronic engineers and get them prepared to come to China to stay one month or more, depending on their capacity to learn, so as to be able to assemble the printers. With this, we will dominate the Nigerian market as well as the African continentwith printers. What we need is the enabling environment, the bank, the government and the professionals who will come in, that is what we are arranging for now. So, Rocana is actually moving into other areas. We are already into printing; we have the geographic printing machine, we have colour separation machine. Now, we are moving into packaging because the only place they do nice packaging in the industry is Lagos and the area is a virgin land, all we need is for our clients to pay up, so that we shift emphasis to the production of printers and packaging materials, we will shift a little bit, so that everything will not be outdoor again.

Why the Chinese are not coming themselves
Actually, the Chinese are so scared about Nigeria. I remember what the chairman said when we were discussing. We told them that we needed some Chinese even if they are two to join our staff. He said that the Chinese government had made a law that every Chinese will only have one child. So, for a family to have one child and send him to Nigeria, a country where there is uncertainty of safety. A country where one ship was lost and one airplane too; so, what is the fate aliens in such an environment? I then challenged him that there are other Chinese nationals in Nigeria, and he said that those ones came to Nigeria on their own, adding that as corporate entity, he could not send anybody to Nigeria.

Profitability
It should have been lucrative actually, but since the government, the youths and other tax agents clamp down on some bodies like LASA in Lagos . LASA wants to take over all advertising business in Lagos , I don’t know whether it is going to extend to other parts of Nigeria because whatever happens in Lagos is a sign of what is going to happen all over the federation. Somebody else who had once practised advertising or outdoor or had been in agency business could decide to go to the states and armtwist their hands and establish his outfit, but how long this will last is the problem because government changes. And by the time he enriches himself with lots of money, other people will look at him because it is political, and then they will stop the idea.

So, how long it is going to last I do not know, but I know that outdoor advertising is a strenuous and risky business; it is outdoor and since it is outdoor, your investment is outdoor. And because of the magnitude of the risk, it requires good payment and once the payment is not forthcoming with the debt margin now going up, cost of labour going up, with the local government and other multiple taxes, then I’m sure it is no more lucrative as it used to be. And that is why Rocana is trying to shift emphasis to innovate on outdoor and choose good sites and maintain very few signboards, then move indoors for indoor production of other advertising materials like packaging and the production of the printers.

My dream
My dream is on course. My dream which is my vision is to be the most effective outdoor advertising production shop in Nigeria, to remain unbeatable in speed, quality and clients relationship, that’s my mission. It is not the money; we want to give you that quality, value for your money, to do it when you want it and to remain friendly with you always. That’s why we don’t lose our clients. Once we are with you we are with you for life. Most of the agencies lose their clients because of sharp practices, but here, we don’t engage in sharp practice. We do business bearing in mind that honesty is the sole of business.

Rocana in next five year
Rocana would have had the best website in the whole world like the Netherlands are asking us to produce parasol for them, 500 parasols in a year which we are vying for from the Netherlands as we speak today. So, Rocana would have been doing jobs internationally in the area of advertising production because that is what we are focusing on now. Rocana would have been doing packaging for the whole Eastern Nigeria, extending even beyond Lagos , Abuja and other parts of the country. Rocana has the stamina and the experience, what is holding Rocana back is the structure on business environment, once all the debts are paid, Rocana will take off and we believe in God that He will remove all the hindrances in no time.