The Switch (and 5 Lessons That Came With It)
“Fate is ‘round the corner, right (Fate is ‘round the corner right),
It hit me right between the eyes (Hit me right between the eyes)…”
— 6LACK, ‘Switch’
Six months ago, I made a career switch from Journalism to Communications. I wasn’t doing badly as a journalist. I was the editor of a pan-African online business publication (Business Insider Sub-Saharan Africa — BI SSA) at 23. I’d just finished my Media and Journalism Fellowship with the Charles Koch Institute a year before. I did some high profile interviews — with Toyin Saraki, Chimimba David Phiri, Jennifer Blanche, Davido, Niniola, and Alex Okosi, among many others. Traffic and revenue were growing and the BI SSA brand, nascent at the time, was starting to blossom. I wasn’t doing badly.
However, after a year heading the publication, I could already see that journalism wasn’t sustainable for me in the long term. You’ve probably heard it before that journalism is broken. It’s not a lie. Journalism has a revenue problem (globally) and it’s become increasingly difficult to figure things out. Added to that, the Nigerian market is generally bad for non-entertainment media, the quality of journalism in the country is not encouraging so it’s hard to even convince anyone to pay subscription fees. For these, and many other reasons, journalism is slowly morphing into Content Marketing (in this market, at least). It also occurred to me at some point that I would not be able to build the kind of life I really want for myself by being a journalist. So, I looked to pivot.
I was a good writer and interviewer (still am), but I realised that I needed to gain more skills if I was going to make the kind of progress I wanted. I taught myself how to talk in front of the camera, I started watching lectures and reading books on business management, I began to focus and talk more publicly about the business side of the media. My plan was to reposition myself and move into a business management role by 2022.
By mid-2019, I saw a window of opportunity to skip 3 years into the future and I took it. Now, I head the communications team at Eko Atlantic, a new city being built on the coast of Lagos to protect Victoria Island and parts of Lekki from the surge of the Atlantic Ocean. We’re reclaiming land lost to erosion over 100 years while simultaneously creating prime real estate that will become the new financial capital of West Africa.
I’ve learned a few things along the way. Nothing profound or new, but I’ve realised that the best lessons are almost always cliches and that the difference is execution with the right amount of luck.
1. Luck is both random and predictable
I met my current boss in December 2018. I interviewed him, then my team executed the interview rollout to perfection. After the interview, like I always do, I took his contact details to stay in touch. I wasn’t looking for a job. I didn’t think I’d ever work for him. I just did with him what I do with everyone I interview — I take their contact details.
The culture at BI SSA is to treat every interview and feature like a big story. They were exclusive, incisive, and in-depth. We never took them for granted. My Editor-in-Chief at the time, Osagie Alonge, always drummed it into our heads how important it was to roll out our interviews (and feature stories) perfectly, to maximise reach and to position the publication’s brand properly. So, this we did with the Eko Atlantic interview. We created cover images, social videos, long-form videos, graphic cards with quotes from the interview, etc.
I had no idea what was coming 7 months later. I stayed in touch with my current boss after the interview. We often exchanged interesting articles and resources. Once in a while, I would say hello and check in on him. Most importantly, however, he was impressed with the interview we did.
In May 2019, my Editor-in-Chief left to take up a job at a tech startup. I knew then that my time had come as well. I made the call to my current boss that I was open to a career switch. He asked me to come and see him in his office. I did. And a few days later, I went from being a journalist to being the head of communications for the largest real estate project in Africa.
I was lucky. I think I’ve always been, but I’ve also been deliberate about my luck.
2. What got you to Level 2 won’t get you to Level 5
You know what happens when you plan for something to happen in 2022 and it happens in 2019 instead? You find out quickly that you’re out of your depth. You become in danger of being exposed as a fraud. At that point, you either let it weigh you down or you figure out how to build muscle fast. I did the latter.
YouTube videos on leadership, management, and Emotional Intelligence have become my daily diet. Once I realised that the skills that helped me become a good journalist weren’t enough to make me great at communications, I changed my reading diet. I started reading more books on Marketing Communications and Behavioural Economics. I spent more than a tenth of my salary on books. I needed to build muscle, and I’m doing it as fast as I can.
Here’s a link to some of the books I’ve bought, if you’re interested.
3. Own your narrative or someone else will mistell your story for you
Working in and with the media has taught me that there’s nothing better than a company knowing how to tell its own story in engaging, relatable ways.
I strongly believe that every company that is big enough to appear in the news should have its own social media person/team. It has to be a core part of your communications strategy.
If you execute well enough, your social media can connect you with your customers and tell your brand story better than any journalist or media publication can, especially in a market like Nigeria where journalists are criminally underpaid and publications underfunded. This lack of proper financial support shows in the generally poor quality of their work. It’s sad, but that’s the reality.
So, it’s more cost-effective and strategically smarter for brands to invest in building out their own ‘media’ through social media. This way, they can utilise their analytics and continue to improve their communications.
At Eko Atlantic, while we value the place of the press, we’ve decided to focus on building out our own media instead. We’ve experimented with short explainer videos and simple graphics, they’ve worked wonders so far. This year, we’re launching our own interview series where we spotlight successful African businesses. We’ve also seen how effective social media is for correcting loads of misinformation and false stories put out by the media in the past.
4. Separate marketing and communications
Your communications will become more effective to the nth power if your communications team doesn’t have to worry about their direct impact on your revenue. Let your sales and marketing team worry about that.
Obviously, this does not apply to every kind of business. Not everyone can afford it. If you can, please do it. A communications team that does not have to worry about immediately generating revenue for the business has more room to be creative and to experiment, and experimenting is how you figure out new ways to do things.
5. Running a lean team
It’s always funny to see people’s faces light up when I tell them where I work, especially advertising and PR agency folk. They hear Eko Atlantic and immediately start to see dollar signs. It’s cute.
The interesting thing about building a city complete with its own infrastructure on land reclaimed from the ocean with 100% private funding is that you have to maximise your resources and prioritise spending. Engineering and policy relations are at the pinnacle of your concerns. You don’t need to spend too much on marketing because the project is self-advertising. Then communications, it comes further down the pyramid. It’s important, but it’s not the most important. So, how then do you make sure your communication is effective? How do you make sure you’re allocating your resources wisely? By running a lean, but highly optimised team.
We do very little advertising at Eko Atlantic, we create all our content in-house, focus on social media engagement, optimisation and strategic media appearances. We also leverage already existing partnerships. We keep overhead costs low by sharing resources with larger teams within the company. This way, the team can remain agile enough to experiment as much as possible.
These are a few lessons I’ve learned since making the switch into Communications. So far, it’s been an interesting journey. If you’re in Communications, what are some of the things you’ve learned that you think will help people like me? Please share.
