Not many people get to live the life of a CEO, and at the same time, live the life of a movie star. Any of the two is enough achievement for most people, but Rich Tanksley has managed to excel in both. He is a successful brand builder, an I.T specialist and a fine thespian.

The former CEO of PULSE Nigeria and star of the TV show, Husbands of Lagos sat with Behind Magazine and gave so many interesting hindsight of his stay in Nigeria so far. Read excerpts of his interview;



How did the PULSE media idea develop?

Pulse is owned by a parent company which is based in Switzerland. It is the oldest and largest media company in Switzerland, called Ringier. They have registered some success in other developing markets and they decided that Africa was the next place to go. So about 5 years ago, they established a media company in Nigeria called PULSE. The vision was basically to go into the next emerging market and capture some market share. So PULSE hired me over two years ago to take what was sort of a foundation, as the head to the next level.

Speaking about the next level, what is the vision for PULSE in Africa?

Pulse wants to be in every market in Africa, they want to be the largest pan African media company and they are kind of on their way to doing that. PULSE now has properties in Ghana; they are building one in Kenya right now, they also have different media properties in Senegal, Ethiopia and Tanzania but you know; I retired as CEO of PULSE about six months ago. So as CEO for 2 years, I built it from nothing to 5 million monthly visitors and then, I retired. Now, my title at PULSE is Brand Ambassador, although I still work with them mostly as an advisor.

There is a lot of discussion going on in Nigeria presently, on youths taking up positions of power, what do you think is the contribution of the media to achieving this?

First of all, new media, which is basically all media now, online, social media and the likes, is run by young people. In PULSE, I think the average age of the employees hired is, 24. Whereas if you look at traditional media, like newspapers, the average age of people working there and reading there, is older than the average life expectancy for a Nigerian, so it is a dead business. Whereas, the new media is run by young people, the young people are creating the narrative; they are creating what gets said and how it gets said. So, I think the media is already an amazing tool for the young people and I think they should utilize it.

What was the impact of government policy on PULSE, when you were CEO?

Government policy did not really affect PULSE that much. The government seems too slow to regulate quick moving industries, so I don’t think there is any regulation about starting a media company. PULSE, we were an exporter; we created the content locally and exported it to US, UK. 30% of our traffic came from the US, UK. So things we created here, and we exported it, but the government did not recognize us as exporters. They did not give any tax benefits, no breaks, nothing, even though we were exporting something that we developed here. There should give incentives for exporters but they did not. It is much easier to do your work and not bother the government.


Read full interview here; http://tushmagazine.com.ng/fg-media-exporters-rich-tanksley/

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lalasticala, mynd44, dominique