CMC Connect boss, Badejo-Okusanya calls for effective value push among practitioners

Group Managing Director of CMC Connect limited- a perception management firm, Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, has attributed the confusion arising from people’s inability to differentiate practitioner’s value offering to the inability of stakeholders to adequately sell themselves.

Okusanya, who runs one of the leading perception management outfits in the Integrated Marketing Communications space in the country said this when executive members of Brand Journalists Association of Nigeria (BJAN) paid him a courtesy visit last Tuesday, at Za Ozzer Bridge House, GRA, Ikeja office of CMC Connect Ltd.

The visit was in continuation of the exco’s plan to intimate stakeholders of its programs and to reaffirm its relationship with them.

According to YBO as he is popularly known, “we need to define what we do and so if there is a confusion about what we do it means that we have not defined ourselves very well”.

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“BJAN in itself is suffering from what we in the communications industry is suffering from, and more so, those of us in the public relations sector. We have not been able to effectively sell our value. People do not know exactly what we bring to the table- what we bring to the table is questionable.

“There is a lot of advocacy that has to be done in that area and one of the things I have been talking about for those of you who listen to me during different fora, is affirmative public relations. It means physicians heal themselves. If we can advocate for those in other sectors, we must advocate for our own industry, the question is, what do we bring to the table? How do we measure our value? How do you then decide what to pay us?

“We need to define what we do, and so if there is a confusion about what we do it means that I have not defined myself enough,” he noted.

He charged journalists who are dabbling into public relations to get adequate training and license to be able to practice, as according to him, because one is a journalist does not make him a professional in the PR practice.

While appreciating BJAN for the visit and support over time, Okusanya, whose firm, CMC Connect clocked 30 years in operation in March said the company will be unveiling a new set of programs and ideas in the weeks to come that will hinge on People, Business and Technology (PBT).

In her speech, Leader of the delegation and BJAN’s chairman, Clara Chinwe Okoro said the new executives have quite ambitious plans and the major one is to restructure the association to become more relevant in the marketing communications space.

“It is a very huge industry and as the bridge between the consumers and the stakeholders, it is very relevant that we are always seen to communicate exactly, what the stakeholders want the consumers to know and that is where we come in to say that we need the stakeholders to understand our position in being critical in the scheme of things in the industry and in doing that there is no other way than to pay this courtesy visit and lay out our plans to them.”