“Anything that can go digital will go digital,” Benny Landa, Entrepreneur and Inventor 1993

The PR industry in the Nigerian market has grown in the past few years, as companies are beginning to understand the value it provides for their businesses. As expected, PR professionals and associations have started to re-brand themselves and are embracing savvy and key digital PR strategies to attain a much broader audience that cannot be reached through traditional offline measures. The landscape in Nigeria remains an interesting one, but as PR professionals, we now have a responsibility to familiarize ourselves with how to stay ahead of the curve in this digitally obsessed world. The time has come to adapt to the new normal and disrupt existing traditional PR agency models to embrace more digital PR.

When we analyse the past few months, we have witnessed an acceleration of digital trends. Tools like video calls and conferencing – once a unique experience but now the new normal, has risen to become the key means of communication. Until recently, it was only possible to make group WhatsApp video calls with four people, however, a recent update expanded this limit to eight people at the same time and it’s also well on its way to introducing a 50-person video call. Before now, live streaming was a nice to have but with the new normal, it has become the safest way to have events. According to a report by Verge, Zoom consumption has gone up from 10m per day in December 2019 to 300m per day today. We all now operate our lives through a screen which of course will influence consumers, as well as online behaviour.

In the Nigerian market, the use of traditional media was the norm with heavy reliance on print and broadcast platforms for companies to tell their stories and to reach their audiences. No doubt, this is fast changing as the rise in digital disruption has birthed the use of new/digital media.

Nigeria remains the most populous country in Africa and the seventh most populous nation in the world, with more than 90 million of its population under the age of eighteen. This, coupled with the nation’s increasing high internet penetration rate and fast-growing number of mobile device users, statistics indicate a rise in the influx of digital migrants and natives in the digital eco-system. With this, the need to embrace digital PR has become very important especially as we need our messaging to get to audiences, meeting them where they are and doing so very quickly.

For PR professionals to adapt to the new digital revolution in Nigeria, there is the need to be innovative, think of new and modern solutions quickly, and harness digital technologies in improving our services. We also need to familiarize ourselves and engage more with top trends influencing the PR industry including digital storytelling, social media listening, blog data, behavioural research, and influencer engagement. Today’s consumers have more choices than ever before and brands that can connect with them in a meaningful way are more likely to succeed; in other words, we need to be clever storytellers. Whether it’s a creative content that generates clicks and shares, or a piece of compelling content that answers people’s questions, story-focused content is a must. Get into the emotions of consumers.

We also see that young people have become the driving force of many social and economic events, and the outcome of most campaigns is dependent, to a large extent, on engagement with this segment. Influencer marketing, has therefore, become a key tactic in any communication plan. Working with this set of aspirational audiences helps brands/companies deliver their messages more effectively and engage easily with their audiences because influencers exist to influence anyway, right?

The new normal has shown us that the impossible can be achieved. During the lockdown, we had to make changes to our lifestyles and business patterns. The world-wide lockdown and movement restrictions forced people to spend most of their time engaging in indoor and online activities. This opened up a window of opportunity for digitally-enabled businesses and it is quite clear that digital tools and innovation will revolutionize the way and manner we all do business and the PR industry is not left out.

Let me give you some context – The city of Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria has a population of over 22 million people and counting. According to a CNN report, more than eight million people, moving in five million vehicles cram into a tiny network of just 9,100 roads every day. This is the reason why we see that Lagosians spend an average of 30 hours in traffic each week — or 1,560 hours annually — while drivers in Los Angeles and Moscow traffic spent only 128 and 210 hours respectively in all of 2018. Journalists in Lagos are not exempted. Journalists spend an average of 4 hours of travel time to attend an event for just one hour? One can only imagine what this does to their productivity and mental well-being.

With the digital revolution, press events and press conferences can now be held virtually. Virtual press conferences still deliver the same results as the physical press conference except we start on time as the excuse of traffic is eliminated. Virtual events and press conferences also provide cost savings especially with companies and executives in different states or countries.

Through change and innovation, PR professionals also need to be creative and find the best solutions for their clients. The question now becomes; how can we convince our clients to evolve communications patterns in this new very digital world? Although, it is often difficult to convince some clients that have the traditional PR mind-set to follow this path, there is no doubt that most brands or businesses would like to sustain their stories in the media. As much as traditional PR is good for product or company announcements, we can begin to ask the question – ‘what happens after the announcement’? With a digital PR strategy, we can further drive the conversation to reach a wider audience and ultimately increase brand visibility and generate leads.

Also important to every brand/business is the results. Our clients want to know the impact their PR approach has had and with digital evolution, the results have become more valuable. Technology allows us to monitor and track consumer behaviour in real-time and gets performance analytics which enables you to gain insights into how well your strategy has worked.

In a nutshell, we are excited about this new digital world and we envisage how this will continue to change the public relations industry especially as it is fast becoming the fundamental element to the success of any PR approach.