After nearly 15 years of working together and building the brand across the continent, Ogilvy Africa and Airtel Africa have decided to part ways. Like any large and long-standing relationship, our two companies have learnt together, succeeded together, grown together, and with time, grown apart. It’s time to go our respective paths.
This was the first paragraph of the obituary notice that announced the death of the 15 year-long marketing relationship between Ogilvy Africa and Airtel Africa.
Interestingly, this relatively long epitaph was written and published on their LinkedIn page by Airtel Africa, who, in stating that the reason for the separation remained private to the two organisations, described the relationship while it lasted as “phenomenal”.
“The Ogilvy Africa Network wishes our friends and colleagues at Airtel Africa and in each of their 14 operating countries, all the very best for a bright future”, Ogilvy Africa concluded its message, which was silent on the pain-points of this separation.
With his parting of ways, Ogilvy Africa is saying goodbye to a sumptuous annual budget cake worth more than $570 million or approximately N930 billion in the Nigerian currency. Given that Airtel Nigeria has 66.2 million of the total 166 million customers the business has in Africa, it is possible to visualise the significant setback this account movement means for Ogilvy Africa’s business in Nigeria. Given the diversity of the Nigerian market, one can assume that the Nigerian market would take more of the marketing budget. Assuming Nigeria takes just 40% of this sum, the loss to the Nigerian Ogilvy business should be in the neighbourhood of N370 billion.
“We’ll cheer for your success, as we’re sure you’ll cheer for ours”, were Ogilvy Africa’s final words in a text readers could see the hard work that went into infusing diplomatic niceties in an otherwise teary-eyed separation. In this industry, you rarely find clients wishing their retired or fired agencies well in that sincere sense of the word. If the feeling was that positive, they wouldn’t have fired you in the first place. It is only the agencies that, depending on circumstances, are seen exhuming campaign milestones and as bragging rights, used mostly as baits to attract future businesses. But for a client who fired an agency to wish it well? Not in the marketing ecosystem.
After the sale of the Ogilvy Africa business to Scangroup, owned by Indian Bharat Thakrar, the company, in breach of its existing affiliation agreement with Nigeria’s Prima Garnet, the plan was to take the Nigerian market by force. Inspiring this hostile takeover were juicy accounts of Airtel Nigeria (which was then domiciled in Prima Garnet by its affiliation with Ogilvy), Guinness Nigeria, and Coca-Cola, among a few others. Then President of WPP group, Martin Sorrell, backed the Indian-Kenyan Thakrar to bulldoze his way into the market when pressure on Prima Garnrt to sell their company failed.
By 2012, the matter had gone to court, triggering a dogfight that lasted more than five years. Scangroup had opened an office in Nigeria preparatory to feed from the ready briefs of Airtel, Guinness and others.
But the persistence of Prima Garnet, backed by some rule changes on advertising practice in Nigeria by foreign agencies slowed, then stalled the take off until Scangroup, then intending to trade as Ogilvy Africa was forced to shut down.
It needs stating that during the battle between Prima Garnet and Scangroup, Airtel and, particularly, Guinness Nigeria Plc, then headed by Seni Adetu (current CEO of First Primus W.A, Ogilvy Nigeria Limited, and Algorithm Media Nigeria Limited) formed a formidable resistance against Prima Garnet. Two major public relations agencies — The Quadrant Company and JSP Communications — were in the vanguard, briefed by the two multinationals to clear the ground for a potential entry of Scangroup’s Ogilvy Africa into Nigeria.
It was widely believed that Adetu dragged Guinness into the fight because of his relationship with Bharat and his vested interest in the Ogilvy Nigeria venture. It did not surprise many when, shortly after the matter was settled out of court with a decent payout by Ogilvy in favour of Prima Garnet, Adetu became the founder of the company that housed the Ogilvy Nigeria enterprise.
The settlement happened in 2018, and Adetu’s Ogilvy Nigeria announced the commencement of its business shortly after. As was natural, Airtel was one of the accounts that berthed on his lap as he changed apparel from a beer manufacturer to an agency head.
The separation of the marriage between Airtel and Ogilvy Africa was hugely anticipated the moment Martin Sorrell, WPP’s President, was disgracefully relieved of his job in April 2018 after 33 years, following allegations of personal misconduct and misuse of company assets. It was believed that he was the key to the relationship that pinned Airtel with Ogilvy Africa. Three years later, in March 2021, Bharat Thakrar, the brain behind the Ogilvy Africa invasion of Nigeria, was also sacked from the board of the company he founded, along with the group’s Chief Finance Officer, Satyabrata Das, over what was described as allegations of gross misconduct.
With the two main heads of the Ogilvy Africa hydra cut off, it was only a matter of time before the business began a search for a new place of rest.
In a February 2024 article, I had likened the ambitions of Sorrell and Bharat to the futile ventures of Adolf Hitler and Napoleon to conquer the world. In that article, I had written that:
“At the height of their world-conquering adventures, both generals (Hitler and Napoleon) began their fall by failing in their attempts to conquer the vast lands of Russia during winter. In the case of Sorrell and WPP, the swan song appears to have started with their failure to conquer Africa. And it all started in Nigeria, where its partner at the time, Prima Garnet Ogilvy, resisted every attempt by the global giant to bully and bulldoze its way into the market”.
In that same article, I also mentioned what the CEO of Prima Garnet Africa Group, ‘Lolu Akinwunmi, had predicted in his book, Skin for Skin: The Prima Garnet Story, about the eventual fate of WPP’s African adventure.
Akinwunmi’s words in that book sounded like a curse from the mouth of divinity itself. He was almost matter-of-fact in his predictions. I also lift generously from that book, where he said that:
Interestingly, Akinwunmi, who now serves as Group CEO of Prima Garnet Africa, did warn of the bad fate that has befallen WPP.
In his book, Skin for Skin: The Prima Garnet Story, Akinwunmi was prophetic in his prediction of the fall of WPP. In Chapter 49 of the book he published in 2018, he had predicted, among other things, that:
“WPP and Ogilvy would fragment. WPP and Ogilvy would be in decline and lose clients. WPP would gradually disintegrate. Many WPP contraptions, especially within the African region, would come to an end. WPP’s main competitors globally would feed on its carcass. Some American corporate scavengers are seriously eyeing WPP. Every personality and organization involved in the failed enterprise would have their dates of reckoning”.
Emerging realities have continued to validate the prediction of the Prima Garnet founder, and with the exit of Airtel from what looked like an inseparable marriage with Ogilvy Africa, the suspicions that other businesses such as Coca-Cola might also be compelled by the forces of marketing osmosis to move house.
A tour of the websites of Ogilvy Nigeria and its sister company, Algorithm Nigeria Limited, didn’t point to busy workplaces. Even though accounts are not sampled as with many other agencies, one will sense the presence of some Coca-Cola brands and that of Cadbury. But Cadbury is taking hits in the shops, and the flagship brand, Bournvita, has eternally struggled against onslaughts from Nestle’s Milo, and other hitherto less-known brands. The incursion of foreign cocoa beverages has contributed to make life difficult for the brand hitherto known as the “vitality drink”.
In search of its lost market share, it is not likely that Bournvita would linger, pointing to a tough future for Ogilvy Nigeria in the absence of the Airtel cash cow.
