Ajufor made the call on Tuesday 5th July 2022 when some executives of BJAN paid him a courtesy visit in his Ikeja office to intimate him of some of the association’s plans.

Since its inauguration, the current leadership of Brand Journalists Association of Nigeria, has embarked on a series of planned activities aimed at improving the IMC space, as journalists who cover the industry.

To be able to achieve this, the EXCO has as part of its plan series of visits to stakeholders in the industry to carry them along as working partners for the progress of the industry.

Speaking during the visit, Emmanuel Ajufor who is also the Chief Executive of Opportunity To See, said OAAN has always enjoyed good relationship with BJAN, though it may not have been as much as was expected.

“You people are on a familiar turf because the relationship that existed between OAAN and BJAN has been very cordial and we have always participated in your magazines by putting one advert in support of the event. So, these are about the easiest we can talk about,” he said.

“But again, leadership helps a lot, now that Clara has taken over- she is an old face in the industry and I hope you all will be able to bring back the vibrancy that we used to know,” he noted.

“And again when we have issues we still talk to BJAN but we don’t do it officially. The last event we had, we picked a team of people from your association to invite and I think it was not the right thing. The right thing is to come through the association and the association will delegate those who will cover the event. That way, we will be having a proper partnership. Just like we have with other sectorial groups. And if we do not do that, we will not be doing things right as an association,” Ajufor also said.

Speaking earlier, BJAN Chairman, Clara Chinwe Okoro who led the BJAN delegate said the essence of the visit was to meet OAAN as a major stakeholder in the Integrated Marketing Communications sector.

She admitted that, no two people have the same gift, even though Goddie Offose raised the bar she hoped to sustain the momentum if not take it a notch higher even as she added that the current leadership of BJAN is open to suggestions and guidance.

In her words: “Over the years, we have done so much with OAAN in terms of media relations, in terms of project management for delivery of PR contents and partnership and what we notice was that, BJAN was not communicating to the stakeholders the full essence of what we represent and we decided to embark on these visits to present to our stakeholders our association and what we stand for and what we can deliver as value to our stakeholders in the long run that would be formidable and sustainable for the growth of the industry”.

Continuing she said: “We want to look at about three critical areas that we want to present to OAAN to consider for us:

“Funding, which is a very critical area especially as we are a not-for-profit organization. So, we have to look for other chains of value to tap into to raise income to cater for our events that we have and in that regard, there is a major project we are embarking on for BJAN. We are aiming to get an estate for our members. It is a long-term project for our administration which just has three years. And what we aim is, if we are able to get bulk money, we take it and pay to the property company who will secure the land for us and then enter into a mortgage arrangement that our members will begin to pay.

“Secondly, we are coming up with a newsletter, Brand Knights, the idea is to focus on industry personalities, C-suite Executives. What we want to do is tell their stories, over the years, they have faced a lot in terms of navigating the business world so we want them to tell their stories when we come to interview them, it’s a very short newsletter, about 12 pages but it will be majorly focused on one CEO or other Executives per newsletter. It will comprise interviews, photograms and the remaining pages will contain other materials and adverts to use to fund it.

“Third, we solicit partnership in terms of granting us some visibility with your members billboards when we are having our events/projects. We have two major projects annually, Consumers Rights Day every March and our Annual Conference which comes up every November and goes with our Annual Award. So, we will need billboards to be able to communicate the events,” Clara said.

Ajufor, who appreciated the visit and assured BJAN of OAAN’s support however extended an invitation to the BJAN leadership to meet with its EXCO at a later date for some more discussion.

“For me any good idea irrespective of where it is coming from, we should be able to talk about it some more. Because as we sit in the exco, people will come with ideas and navigate through…what I can tell you head on is that you have our support henceforth we will also be working through the association,” Ajufor further noted.