30 Leading Africa's Branding & PR Elites

Publisher’s Note

It is always with great pride and pleasure that I welcome our returning readers and everyone that is reading us for the first time.

Today, Business Elites Africa presents to you 30 Leading Africa’s Branding & PR Elites. We have conscientiously curated the content of this edition; and are thrilled to present the most desirable branding and PR elites from the continent of Africa. Nothing compares to the feeling of creation, bringing forth or formation - branding.

“Your brand is your public identity, what you’re trusted for. And for your brand to endure, it has to be tested, redefined, managed, and expanded as markets evolve. Brands either learn or disappear,” says Lisa Gansky.

Despite all the upheavals against the continent’s economic prospects, the mystery and dominant undercurrents of the African genius have never ceased to amaze the world.

The entire continent is known and celebrated for her resilience and dogged ascendance through the harshest of life realities. These selected and vetted brands and minds never stopped creating and making brands come

to life. Architecting brands from sheer illusions is the business of the day.

In this current edition of Business Elites Africa, we present to you Africa’s - coastto-coast leading branding and PR Elites.

Our commitment to the service of Africa’s SMEs is unwavering. Your courage and support have been our fortitude. The road ahead may be tough but our vision and commitment to the promise of a better Africa are stronger.

On behalf of the team at Business Elites Africa, I would like to thank everyone featured in this issue, for allowing us to tell their stories and for participating in the goals of this publication.

Many thanks to you, our ardent readers and followers! Our continued existence and relevance are owed to you. Your partnership and support on this journey is greatly appreciated.

Please send us your thoughts on how we can continue to improve and what you’d like to see in our future publications.

Happy reading!

ETHELBERT NWANEGBO

Publisher/ Editor-in-Chief ethelbert.n@glimpse33.com

Disclaimer: The information on this magazine is for information purposes only. Business Elites Africa Magazine assumes no liability or responsibility for any inaccurate, delayed or incomplete information, nor for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All information can be withdrawn or changed without notice. Whilst every care has been taken in producing the information on this magazine, this does not guarantee the accuracy of the information. Business Elites Africa is not responsible for any opinion, expressed by its authors. Materials contained on this magazine are subject to copyright and other proprietary rights. No material on this magazine can be reproduced, adapted, distributed or stored in a retrievable system or transmission without a prior written consent from Business Elites Africa Magazine. © 2022 Business Elites Africa Magazine. All rights reserved.

‘Even in Africa, Nigerians are Different’; Igwe Okeke on How to Sell to Nigerians 10

The Best PR Strategies Come from Crunching Big Data - Jacques Du Bruyn, CEO - Flume Marketing 14

“Passion is 80% of the Success Game” – Temple Obike 15

I’m an Accidental Entrepreneur – Lanre Adisa 18

‘An Entrepreneur Must be Ready to Fall Down and Always Get up Again’ - Nicole Capper 24

Nigeria is a Better Place to Live’ – UK-Returnee Entrepreneur, Yetunde Ogunnubi 26

Steve Babaeko: The Man Known for X3M Creativity 34

Meet Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, one of the Most Experienced PR Expert in Existence 36

Ayeni Adekunle; A well rounded marketing communications professional 38

A look at Bukola Sawyerr Izeogu, the Nigerian Multi-facet PR Expert Extraordinaire 44

Lamia Kamel the Egyptian Woman Zealous About Changing Her Country’s Narrative 45

Milkaela Mwangura: A Shinning Light in Kenya’s Marketing Communications Industry 48

How Bewaji Adeniji Started as a PR Rookie to Becoming a Master 50

NIGERIA : 5, Ogusiji Street, off Allen Avenue,Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria Tel: +234909 943 0429 +234916 473 4106

USA: 6620 Southpoint Drive S. Suite 511, Jacksonville, FL 32216 Tel: +904-240-7044

SOUTH AFRICA: 73 Booysens Road Conner Withycombe Street Johannesburg 2091, South Africa.

Bola Atta: The Creative Genius Driving UBA’s Marketing 52

Chude Jideonwo: How a hustling young man attained success before 30 years 54

Adebola Williams: How a Failed Entry Into Acting Turned into a Successful PR Career 56

Nigeria’s National Award in the Dust: Is Chimamanda Adichie Unpatriotic? 74

GLO : A Strong African Brand Built; The Back Of Mega Influencers 78

Philip Odiakose arguably pioneered the Public Relations measurement and evaluation sub-sector in Nigeria. He’s the founder of P+ Measurement Services, a data-driven media intelligence and evaluation firm.

Philip saw the potential in media monitoring long before his bosses thought it was anything other than a job for rookies. As an employee, Philip would get to work two hours before the standard resumption time, and before his colleagues resumed, he would have compiled and sent reports to clients. His employer had no idea he was the reason clients were happy until he left.

It was inevitable that Philip’s diligence and consistency would take him far. But he himself didn’t know that. He had no plan to become an entrepreneur; he only cared about doing anything committed into his hands excellently. But the universe aligned in his favour on a fateful day, and he landed a multinational client at a job interview.

He shares his inspirational story with Business Elites Africa in this interview.

You studied Industrial Physics at the University; how did that journey land you in the media measurement and evaluation business?

My first experience in the job market was around market research. I got a job with a market audit research firm, which gave me a little exposure to brands and a little bit of analytics because we were carrying out market research, and I was also taking part in data gathering and analysis. Although that did not spur my interest in pure media monitoring and evaluation, it played huge role years down the line because I had to make a lot of references to analytics and brand research.

What gave me the jump into pure measurement and evaluation was when I worked with several leading Public Relations (PR) agencies in Nigeria as a media analyst. After a while, I saw the potential in data and analysis, and I decided to specialise in that. At this time in

the PR industry, nobody wanted to build a career in media monitoring and evaluation. The practitioners didn’t see it as a core function in an agency. Even currently, there are very few of my type in the PR industry that does media monitoring and evaluation as their core business.

If you ask any freshman in a PR agency where he sees himself in two years, he will tell you he wants to be a client service director, business director, or account director. But it was different for me; I was passionate about media monitoring and evaluation. I also wanted to solve some unethical practices in that industry due to the unavailability of data and research in the PR industry. And I realised someone needed to make that available, and that inspired me to establish a media monitoring and evaluation company. Have there been media monitoring companies in Nigeria before then? Yes. But the huge focus of those companies was just data, but brands in Nigeria were looking for insights and analytics. They were looking for an organisation that would break those numbers down for clear value purposes.

So when we came into the industry, we saw that the four major media monitoring companies in Nigeria were focused on broadcast and out-of-home media. There was no one looking out for the PR industry, so we decided to focus on that. We didn’t come into the industry as a media monitoring company; we came in as a media intelligence and evaluation agency because we came in with the insight and analytics value.

thought we were trying to solve problems, but at the same time, we would inevitably step on people’s toes. What gave us the zeal and drive to continue was the problem we wanted to solve, which was to make data available for the PR industry to enable them to make informed decisions. That’s why I always tell people that whatever business you’re doing, if you’re not solving problems, you won’t last in that business. Once you’re solving a problem, the money is always going to come

We had that resistance, which led to many struggles in our first year in 2015. We started at the peak of the recession, and there were huge eyebrows from senior PR practitioners who thought we came to disrupt their lunch and create unnecessary issues in the industry. Honestly, it was a bit discouraging at the time because we

Thank you very much for that question. Initially, we did not see that as a problem, but a year later, we realised we needed them. That’s also because, in the big picture of our business, we want to have all the PR agencies in Nigeria outsource all their media monitoring, intelligence, and measurement activities to us so that they can focus on reputation, relationship-building, and brandbuilding. So we started engaging them and making them understand that we are not foes; we are friends and that our goal is to ensure they have a healthy brand. We’ll be seven years this year (2022), and I can tell you that we have been able to service more than 18 PR agencies in Nigeria and four to five global agencies. Beyond the agencies, we also have clients we are working with directly.

Let me tell you about my early days. While I was working as an employee in the PR industry, I was a very dedicated fellow, and my bosses would attest to that. I still get their commendations. I was very selfless. I would resume the office by 6:30 am while we were supposed to resume by 8:00 am. I would pick the papers from the vendor, and before my team members resumed, I would have sent the report to clients. The clients got their reports by 7 am. My bosses did not know that until I left, and clients

Did you eventually find common ground with these agencies, considering that, as a new business, you would need the brands they represent to generate revenue?

What were the struggles you had to go through in your entrepreneurship journey?

You talked about unethical practices in the PR industry that your company wanted to correct. Didn’t you have a problem with some of the agencies who might think you were trying to be the police of the industry?

began complaining that they were getting their reports late. So, my boss was like, what is happening? That was when my boss realised I used to come to work by 6;30am.

I didn’t plan to become an entrepreneur. It was never in my plan; I guess it found me. One day, I went for a job interview and told them how I wanted to do media monitoring for them as a staff but discovered they were looking for a consultant instead. I had to align immediately and pitch myself because it was a multinational company. That was how it all started. So, I have not had major struggles because I already selflessly did this for people even without getting paid. I worked at a place for seven months without pay, and I was still resumed work at 6:30 am because I saw the value of media monitoring before anyone did. So when I started my own business, I didn’t have to struggle so much. We already had a multinational client, but the struggle I had to deal with was developing my leadership capacity because I was only prepared for the backend work, not to become an entrepreneur or a leader.

meant they had seen what I had not seen in terms of value and potential. Maybe I would have taken the money if I needed it, but I would have regretted that decision years down the line. I think running a business requires patience. Entrepreneurs are too anxious; they want to get things very fast. Most times, when people have a great idea, they think all they need to start is funds, and they go to financial institutions to get loans without understanding the challenges that lie ahead in the business.

Patience. People need to understand that there is no crime in starting small. In the past seven years, we have not taken any loans, and we have never owed salaries for once, even amid the covid recession. And this is because I never had any urgent or crucial need for external financing.

For instance, in 2016, when I was still running P+ Measurement from my single-room apartment in Surulere, Lagos, a foreign company wanted to acquire a 70% stake in the business for N30 million. They also wanted the brand name changed to theirs, and I would still be the one running the company, and I’d receive a salary. But I rejected the offer because I didn’t need that kind of money then, even though I didn’t know what the next two years of the company would look like and we only had one client.

I could have taken the money, set up my office in Ikoyi and started living a flamboyant lifestyle, but entrepreneurship was a new path for me. I had not figured out many things. So I did not need the money. Also, I reasoned that if a foreign company that wanted to come into the African market offered me this kind of money, it

When I wanted to start and got the go-ahead from the multinational client, I didn’t have money. So, I went to ‘Ojuelegba - under bridge’ (a Lagos suburb), I looked for a popular vendor there, and I told him to be supplying me with all the daily newspapers day by 6 am and that I’d read through and buy only the ones that my client has stories in. I told him he’d come in the afternoon to pick up the rest of the papers after I might have selected the ones I wanted.

I told him it was a temporary arrangement, that it would get to a time that I’d be buying all the papers from him. We reached an agreement eventually.

He might bring 16 papers for me in a day, and I could buy only two because we had just one client. He would come to pack the remaining papers in the afternoon, which was how we dealt with him. So, the cost of buying 16 pieces every day had already drastically reduced. It’s about trying to cut your clothes according to your size.

I even had access to a loan, but I didn’t go for it because I didn’t need it. Our first client was Stanbic IBTC Holdings. We were supposed to manage the group and all its subsidiaries so that indirectly gave me access to loans. You must understand what you need the money for and how you will repay it. If you do not have a dire need for it, do not take it. I did not see any need for it. That is what is killing many entrepreneurs today. Some of them have shut down and gone back to paid employment

In the first year of my business, I didn’t have a two-year or fiveyear plan. My only plan in 2015 was to ensure that day was right. This is seven years down the line, and that approach has never failed me.

What lessons has entrepreneurship taught you?

If you want to start a business and you have a great idea if the next thing you need is not money, what do you need?

People need to understand that there is no crime in starting small. In the past seven years, we have not taken any loans, and we have never owed salaries for once

By Dimeji Akinloye

Even in Africa, Nigerians are Different: Igwe Okeke on How to Sell to Nigerians

deep-end in content production, in terms of what the content was about, and it gave me an opportunity to meet many celebrities.

I went into the banking sector, and I became the corporate affairs officer of one of the financial institutions in Nigeria. My experience and activities in the banking sector brought me back to what I had always wanted to do in school, advertising, and media/corporate communication. Basically, that was how my career transcended from classroom to content production and eventually to advertising.

I came into advertising media about 16 years ago, and to be honest, it has been a fast pace of growth for me. It has been an insightful journey for me. I started my career in advertising as a media planner, and I moved into strategy development and then into the administrative part of the business, which I am doing now with Carat.

Let’s take it back a little. Your first degree was in mass communication. What piqued your interest in that field?

Igwe Okeke’s path in media and marketing communication was set from childhood, and he intentionally toed the route that led to his career success against all odds.

He is the Managing Director of Carat Nigeria, the world’s first media agency and a subsidiary of Dentsu International, one of the world’s largest global marketing and advertising agency networks.

In this interview, Igwe tells us how he went against everyone in his life who wanted him to choose a different career path. He talks about the science of building a vibrant brand using a full proof integrated marketing strategy and more.

Your professional career started in the lecture hall; as a lecturer, how did you pivot to marketing communications?

I started my career at the University of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, where I observed my compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps. I played a double role then, one was with the Office of Public Relations Officer, and I also doubled as an assisting lecturer in the department of Mass Communication.

After that, my career, as it were, started in content production. In 2007, I was an Assistant Content Manager for a company called DM Audiovisuals. We produced a very popular content called ‘Friend or Foe’, sponsored by Guinness in those days. I was

Interesting! This is the first time I am actually telling the story officially. I only discuss it casually with my friends.

I’m someone you would say discovered his talent very early in life. And I programmed myself in such a manner that I did not lose focus of that.

As a child, I was fond of painting, and nobody taught me to paint. I would play on the sand, drawing pictures, and people would come and watch me do it. I remember myself as a child using my mother’s empty tomato purée cans, empty milk cans and used hair thread as tools of art - I would tie the thread to the tomato purée can end-to-end, and I’d wire my father’s house and speak loudly using the empty can as my microphone. I grew up seeing myself do that, and nobody

taught me. I’d speak and sing, and people would gather around me as I ‘performed.’

Nursing mothers would come in the daytime and gather the children they are looking after and put me in the middle to sing for them. I would sing and talk, and I’d capture everybody’s attention. The crying children would stop crying.

So while in secondary school, I repeatedly asked myself self-examining questions, like, ‘what exactly am I? or who am I?’ ‘How was I as a child, and how did that transcend into whom I had become?’

I was asking those questions because I was good at sciences and art. I was not one of those guys that went to secondary school and would choose the subjects they wanted. I did all from physics, biology, chemistry, geography, agric science, history, literature, etc., and my results were excellent in all of them.

So I wanted to write my West African Examination Council (WAEC) papers, we were required to choose a certain number of subjects. Everyone wanted me to go into medical sciences, and my family also said I’m good at sciences, but I still had that sober reflection of what I was as a child and I told myself that as long as I am unable to change the innate abilities, then that is probably what I am and that is what I must pursue against the other interests they wanted me to express. So, unknown to my late vice principal then, who really wanted me to be in the medical sciences, I changed the subjects I wrote in my WAEC because something in communication was driving me.

So, when I was looking for a course to study at the University, it was also about ensuring that I aligned with my gifted area. When I gained admission into the University of Nigeria Nsukka, I first studied English and Literary Studies and but one year down the line, I applied to change my program to Mass Communication because I felt I was

dealing with language and that wasn’t going to help me to express myself in the field of advertising, which is what I had always wanted. I asked myself, ‘what is that single thing that would help me express all that I am from my childhood, and how do I make it my profession because it feels like that is what I am built to do?’

When I wanted to change my program, I was told that I’d lose a year, and I accepted it. I started all over again from year 1 in Mass Communication. The essence was to build

that benefit to come easily. In doing that, they jump from one place to the other without actually staying to understand the nitty-gritty of the job. It is knowing the nitty-gritty of the job that will take you places.

When you know the job like the tip of your fingers, to the point you don’t need to look at any books when you are called upon at any point in time, then that’s what makes you a professional.

Unfortunately, the advertiser also does not have the patience to scrutinise professionals coming from the consultancy side of the job before they hire, and so what you see is people spending one or two years in advertising and jumping to the client’s side which, to me, is an aberration. One of the things that helped me early in my career was to really understand the nitty-gritty of the job as relative to the Nigerian environment. That’s why I tell people when we have conversations about the global practice that I know what can work in the Nigerian market.

myself into what I am doing today. That’s what I have always been passionate about. I didn’t want to lose touch with my childhood because I felt that is what I am meant to be.

Coming back to your advertising career, your rise was quite fast. What would you say were the factors that contributed to your success?

Let me answer your question this way. I think today’s generation of advertising media guys are so much in a hurry, and I think it’s also a generational issue. We live in a generation where people are interested in their career’s financial benefits and want

Why are you a consultant if you do not understand the needs of your clients and your brands and understand them relative to the environment? How you advertise a global brand cannot be how you will advertise such brands in Nigeria {I am sorry to say}. In some markets, for instance, digital media solutions would be perfect, but in some markets like ours, it may not be perfect for certain audiences. So you can’t come and prescribe that you want it to be 100% digital solutions. The campaign might be a failure. I will not advise you to make it a 100% digital solution if I know it won’t work. So that’s one of the things that helped me early in my career. I focused on understanding the nitty-gritty of the job.

What about the Nigerian market that makes it so different from other places across the world?

So many things. First of all, you are dealing with the most populous black market in the world, in terms of the human population. Apart from that, the audiences are different. If I am not mistaken, Nigeria has over 500 languages and over 700 local government communities. Then we have nothing less

We live in a generation where people are only interested in their career’s financial benefits and want that benefit to come easily.

than 500 radio stations and not less than 200 TV stations. Note that there are about 36 states in Nigeria plus the federal capital territory, and each of these states has its own radio and TV stations.

Now, where am I driving to? As it is, there is over 50% or thereabout smartphone penetration in Nigeria; I didn’t say mobile phone penetration because mobile phone density in Nigeria is high to the extent that it’s looking like the number of mobile devices in Nigeria is almost equal or even above its population, if I am not mistaken. In a nutshell, what it means is that media fragmentation in Nigeria is way over the line, which means to target a specific Nigerian audience successfully, you will then need to analyse the market by the level of segmentation, and it really tilts to the audience. You need to understand their exposure rate to the different media channels available in the market.

The implication is that the ratings you will enjoy by advertising and campaigning to specific audiences will be too tiny because audiences are exposed to different media channels simultaneously. So you can have audiences that are exposed to multiple devices and channels at the same time. Apart from that, you will then need to consider the different languages of that particular target segment and their psychographic attributes. So it’s much more difficult to advertise in Nigeria than in any other country.

Let’s compare Nigeria to South Africa. Let’s use TV as an example. How many TV stations do they have in South Africa? They have SABC and DSTV, so fragmentation cannot be compared with Nigeria. We have over 50 radio stations in Lagos alone (I’m not sure of the exact number). If that is true, tell me how it will be easy for you as a media consultant to easily communicate with everybody simultaneously.

Some would argue that the advent of digital media changed the

dynamics in favour of advertisers. Do you agree?

This is why I said it depends on the audience segment that you are targeting. If you are targeting more of the Gen Z audience, then more of your investment would have to be more around digital social channels and search channels which will lead you to things like Search Engine Optimisaton (SEO). How do you optimise? You optimise by keywords and so on.

In a nutshell, when you develop a global concept without the local adaptation or re-adaptation of that local concept, you may miss the Nigerian audience. That’s some of the challenges we are facing today because many advertisers come back to you with global methodologies without allowing you, the consultant, to come back to them with

with Nigerians automatically. Within Africa, Nigerians are very different, so how you develop our communication and market to us certainly has to be different.

What are the challenges you have to surmount in your career?

I’ll tell you it’s data and technology. For instance, there is something we call econometric modelling. It is where you’re looking at the availability of data that will help insight in marketing from the audience side, then the media insight, and then the client’s sales insight or data. So in that sense, you’re saying how do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing communication activities, and how are these various marketing communication activities impacting the business growth from a sales standpoint? That’s the challenge because many of these are well-developed in the American market, Europe, and other developed regions.

To have a very good econometric modelling platform, you have to have trended this kind of data for over three years to show consistency. But in most African markets, this kind of information is lacking. Most advertising and media agencies do not have the robust data to understand the consumer deeply enough to be able to help with this type of analysis and projection. That’s the privilege I enjoy at Carat and Dentsu. Carat gave me the opportunity to understand the consumer a lot deeper; that gives me an advantage over the competition. This is not about ‘I swear to God’ in a bit to convince a client that you can deliver. We have the data in-house. We have a global platform called the CCS (Consumer Connections System), and I’m also the head of CCS here in Nigeria. It’s the most robust consumer insight data that tends to understand the consumer and the brand, not just from a surface point of view but from a deep point of view of motivations.

For example, what’s my motivation if I’m to buy an alcoholic beverage? What will make me buy or not buy? What’s my lifestyle? This is the kind of data that measures over 60 touchpoints. It gives me the joy to interact with this kind of data that helps me make cogent recommendations to my clients to help their businesses grow.

Interview || By Simeon Onoja

The Best PR Strategies Come from Crunching Big Data - Jacques Du Bruyn

South Africa-based marketing expert Jacques Du Bruyn has leveraged years of experience in digital marketing to launch a full-service agency. His brainchild, Flume Marketing, is driving positive outcomes for leading brands on the continent.

Business Elites Africa caught up with Bruyn to gain insights that’ll propel you, either a PR professional or an entrepreneur.

What inspired the launch of Flume Marketing

In 2013 there were very few fully integrated digital agencies around. We started Flume with the ambition of creating a truly digitally born agency that could provide clients with a full spectrum of digital services and do that all in-house.

What’s most unique about your company?

At this stage of our journey (10 years), it’s the fact that we’re a 100-man full-service digital marketing agency that’s independent. Independence gives us the ability to create processes without asking for permission so that we can service our clients who have unique ways of working. This also makes us very responsive.

What strategies did you first use

At first, it was all about exercising our network and running PR through the media. We also jumped at every speaking opportunity we could.

Have you ever felt like quitting, and how did you persevere?

I have never felt like quitting because I’ve loved every aspect of it. Yes, there are difficult

times, and there are ups and downs. But I have a fantastic business partner and have built a solid leadership team. These people never make me feel like quitting.

How do you develop branding or PR strategies for organisations?

As per any good strategy, one must look at the research. Analyse the organisation’s own data, look at quantitative data, online listening data and finally, search data. This should give you a very good indication of where the organisation is at, what the market is saying and how you should respond.

I would have been bolder, more confident, and more deliberate about how I sold Flume in the beginning. I think I played small in the beginning and cared too much about what people thought of Flume and me personally.

Why is PR so important in the life of a business or organisation?

Especially in the B2B space, it is a tool for creating a trusted narrative around your organisation. Trust is hard to come by, perception is everything. PR builds both of those.

What advice would you give to someone trying to build a career in PR?

Think big, start small, and act now.

How do you deal with stress?

I take deliberate breaks and have learnt to say ‘no’ more often.

for marketing your business?

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently when you first started out?

By Dimeji Akinloye

Passion is 80% of the Success Game – Temple Obike

Temple Obike’s journey is full of detours, and interestingly, the different turns, albeit unconnected, turned out to be a guiding light to the advertising career path he had always wanted. He is the founder of Brand Envoy Africa, an integrated marketing communications company based in Lagos, Nigeria.

In this interview with Business Elites Africa, Temple talks about his struggles, growth, and how to build a successful business in Africa or elsewhere, among other issues.

How did you become a Brand Strategist?

Please share your story with us.

I want to believe my passion for branding and Public Relations started in my adolescent years because I had always had a keen interest in people. I had always wanted to know what motivated people to behave the way they do. This was also because I come from a family of six siblings, where I’m the last child. So, I started from a place of keen observation with my siblings, which naturally spread out. It got me to a point where I started getting interested in what makes an individual or a group behave the way they do, which is what we call psychology.

Along the way, I noticed that certain things make people react in certain ways. People react to words, and things they see. It dawned on me that a good story was one of the major things required to get people to react. So, I will say this was where my passion began. I set out knowing I was going

to get into advertising. I knew I just had to get into the communication line.

Did that inform your course of study in school?

Considering where I come from, parents want their children to be something else. Of course, my parents would have been happy if I turned out to be a medical doctor

because I did take a keen interest in biology, which happens to be one of the things you notice when you are interested in humans. As much interest as I had in biology, I don’t think that was what I wanted to do, but my parents felt otherwise.

So everything moved in the direction they wanted. I studied Cell Biology and Genetics at the University for my B.sc and while there joined an International youth Non-profit where I was a project manager carrying out projects at orphanages and speaking to individuals in slums around Lagos. Post-bachelors, things got to a point where I knew I needed to do something different for my master’s program, so I did an MSc first in IT Business and Psychology afterwards. Something was still void so I took a professional course in Branding and PR. This was when my full-blown love for advertising started. Even in Uni, while studying Cell Biology and Genetics, I had a flare for art, Public health, and loved everything that had to do with marketing and communication. I’d throw myself to every opportunity that was out there. In fact, I set up my first advertising agency in Uni, which metamorphosed into what I currently run although I had to re-brand subsequently. I set it up while still in school.

What job did you take on after you left school?

It was actually quite interesting when I left school. I had secured an advertising job while in school where I worked for 4 years, but my next job after that was with a financial advisory firm for the next 3 years. I became a research analyst. From there, I moved up gradually and got another job with a content acquisition and creation company who I stayed with for another 3 years. I started as

a content manager for them here in Nigeria, but gradually I got West Africa under me and handled the Middle East for them as well. I was the content development manager for East Africa and West Africa where I and my colleagues had signed up the top musicians and KOL’s at the time. Afterwards, I started an IT company with a couple of friends. We were supplying content to the telco’s such as MTN and 9mobile. It was an interesting journey, but after a while, I realised that I needed to return to my first love, advertising and branding. So, I gradually pulled back, realigned myself and went back to advertising and branding.

How has the journey been?

To be candid, it has been quite an interesting journey. It was a path of self-discovery because many other things have come into play. There are days you wake up feeling confused and not questioning what you are doing but other days aren’t like that.

Sometime in 2012, I had to go back and see if I could try my hands at psychotherapy, which was interesting because it was not popular then. I got a part-time job with a second Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). One of the things I was doing was writing copies for them. They couldn’t pay me, but I was still writing copies for them. I came to love what they were doing along the line because they were visibly impacting lives. It got me thinking and encouraged me to acquire more knowledge in the field. Within four years that I was with them, I had gone back to school for a master’s program in Psychology to add to what I already had and before I knew it, it took me down another path: Psychotherapy. I started counselling people, but in the evenings, the NGO would still pass on copies that needed to be written. So, it was like me having the best of both worlds at the time and made me see my PR journey differently. Beyond what you write, somebody at the other end gets to feel the impact of how good the job you do is or how bad it is. So, it has just been a potpourri of experiences for me.

You mentioned there was a time when you were confused and had to question what you were doing with your life. How do you get past it when you are in that kind of zone?

I think this is a very important question. We all get to a crossroad in life. The first thing you do is to stop everything and cut out irrelevant activities because at that point, all you should be doing is inwardly reflecting. Everything you are going through is internal, so you must trust your internal convictions more. All the externalised activities at that point may pose distractions, anything happening outside of you will support the fact that you should be doing this or doing that.

The greatest conviction you need is peace of mind because whatever decision you make eventually, as long as you feel at peace about it, that is your biggest pointer.

The second thing you must do is to take account of the skillsets that come naturally to you, which is what we call gifts. What is it that you are gifted in? Once you can find what your gifts are, you can ask yourself, ‘is everything I am doing now around areas of gifting?’ If yes, ‘can I move this gift to a talent?’ This is because people can see what you are doing when it becomes a talent(something you become the “go-to” guy for). From then onwards, you can move it to a point where it becomes a skill, where it starts attracting money. But before you move from talent to the skill stage, you must have put in some work. That is why you need to go back and re-educate yourself. Just expand your horizon in the field so that you can start attracting money to it.

Failure is inevitable in every man’s life; how do you handle failure?

Talking about failure, I have failed at plenty of things, trust me. If you have never failed, you have never learnt. Failure is an intrinsic part of our everyday lives. When you fail, it knocks the wind off your sail. Imagine a man or woman that has never failed, it almost makes you believe that you are invincible, but once that invincibility matrix is out, you are faced with the reality. So what it does is that it gives you raw objectivity in whatever it is you want to do, and it humbles you. That is the beauty that comes out of failure.

These days, almost every young person wants to own his own business. He wants to be called a CEO. What’s the reality of running a business in a country like Nigeria?

Well, I don’t mean to dissuade anybody from starting a business because it is the ultimate dream, but there is something I want all of us to know, and I think it’s a good opportunity to mention this. There is what I call the ‘toxic hustle culture.’ Everybody wants to make that one million dollars and leave their job. In fact, right now, people who have 9 to 5 are almost being shamed for being employees because popular media has ill-glamorised owning your own business. This has produced a trend where ‘due-process’ is being undermined or made to appear foolish. On the contrary, It is a fundamental factor in building anything meaningful.

I can give you a very prime example. If you tell me you own an advertising agency and you have not been able to write a copy, you have not been able to go out and handle marketing operations; you have not been able to close a sale, you have not been able to put your finances in order, at least sit down and know your basics finances - like inflow and outflow, if you have not been able to walk through all these departments and understand it at the onset, at least at the basic level, before you now hire people who are better than you to handle them, then you are a disaster waiting to happen.

Those lessons you failed will come back to haunt you at some point. So, the process is critical. The toxic hustle culture is killing a generation because everybody wants to drop-out like the zuckerbergs of this world and make it big (nobody ever remembers he had an option from his father to either run a Mc-donald franchise or go to Harvard). Firstly not everyone gets into Harvard without some level of work being put in and not all parents hand over Big-Mac Franchises as options to their kids. Most do not want to go through the process. So, yes, it is good to start your business but while romanticising with the idea of becoming the next Dangote or Elumelu, be willing to put in the work because I see a lot of people who want to start businesses but have no incline to what it takes to be in that field. They don’t even know who the top performers in the sector are. So how on earth are you supposed to survive in the business if you don’t know how it functions? If you don’t know the nitty-gritty and the in and out of business. It is dead on arrival, pretty much.

Let me backtrack a little. When I was in University, my first major gig was a marketing campaign with Hewlett Packard (HP), which was a huge morale booster for me, and from that point onwards, I never looked back and dreamt big. There was a combination of failures and successes, but I kept pushing.

When it was time to start my company, I knew I had to get the branding right from the get-go starting with the name. I wanted a Pan-African brand, so I named it Brand Envoy Africa. You don’t brand yourself locally if you know you want to be international, that’s why it started with the name, but beyond the name, there was something else that was important, launching out.

This is where the experience you have garnered all along comes into play. That’s why I advise people to resist the urge to throw themselves out there hurriedly; it’s important you test the market with your thought process first. So I started writing brand articles and marketing articles. I started researching, reading, and putting out my thoughts, and my thought would attract people, and people would seek out the writer. That was how I pushed myself out; after a while, partnerships, introductions, radio interviews, and speaking opportunities came. You see, it’s a chain of events. You must negotiate the path, and you must navigate it intentionally, which is a mistake a lot of people make. They first want to become popular and put themselves out there as the CEO or founder of XYZ company, but the foundation is faulty. Put your thought process out and let your thought process attract the people who are for you and then you grow with the right crowd. That was how I started.

How does one run a successful business in Nigeria?

If you want to run a successful business in Nigeria and any other place in the world, the first thing I think you must have is resilience. I don’t think life by itself gives you it’s best things easily. I believe, by default, nobody is supposed to make anything out of this life unless a version of you becomes valuable

enough to attract and hold those things, and it’s a personal opinion. So resilience is the first thing you must onboard; your tenacity must be there because you will fail.

The second thing I think you must have is the willingness to adapt because there are days your flexibility would be required. There are days you set out on a path, and somewhere down the line, you have to change course and adapt. There are days you come into the meeting room, and a simple statement renders all the presentations you practised null and void. Right there, you need to create another presentation without creating another presentation.

The last thing on my list is that you must genuinely be interested in people. You must have a heart for people because your workforce is actually the lifeblood of what you do.

Let’s assume you knew everything and had to do it yourself. How long would you last? You should have great people skills. You should be able to manage people, you should be a good manager, and while you are at it, you should be human. I think that is what it takes.

higher up you go, the more responsibilities you see, like having a family, children looking up to you, there are external dependents and all of that.

So it is actually a race. It’s tasking on your time, so when you have time at the onset, do every single thing that comes to you. Write every single idea, and write down every single concept. There was a concept I needed to go back and clean up and use for a campaign, a concept I wrote down 10 years ago, and it was still fresh to me. All I needed to do was just revamp it and make it relevant to the times.

There is so much ado about passion; some will say you don’t need to have passion for a business as long as it’s a lucrative venture. What is your opinion?

If you knew what you know now, what would you do differently?

That is a million-dollar question. If I knew what I know now, like 10 to 15 years ago, I would have tried everything that came to my head, even when I felt finances were an impediment. I would have still attempted because, in actual fact, the more you come along in life, the more you notice that the problem is not really financing; the problem is you.

I could have written down all the concepts that came to my head. I could have had a jotter I moved around with every single day because the higher up you go, the lesser time you have and the lesser time you have, the lesser opportunity you have to do that same thing you love doing, which is why the higher up you go, you hire more people to help relieve you of time so that you can go back to doing the thing you used to love but it never really happens that way because the

In my opinion, passion is 80% of the success game because that’s what keeps you going through tough times. One of the things you must teach yourself is self-motivation which is a branch of emotional intelligence. It gives you an opportunity to clap for yourself when no one else is there to cheer you on. There are days you will be in the dark, and you might be there with friends, siblings or a spouse by your side, who knows you are hurting, but words might fail you to communicate exactly what the hurt is. It’s a place deep and vulnerable that you struggle to express it. So one thing that keeps you going is your passion because that is the only thing that can advise you in the dark place nobody else can reach.

When all is said and done, and you are in that deep dark confused space, you first need to ask yourself why you started the business in the first place. You have to constantly remind yourself of the reason you started. I have heard people say cash is the ultimate motivation, but I have seen people who have all the cash but zero passion and motivation, and at some point, they had to leave that line of business to look for something else. Have you seen a multi-millionaire leaving his business empire to go and start art? That’s the power of passion.

When you started Brand Envoy Africa, what was your first marketing strategy?

By Dimeji Akinloye

I’m an Accidental Entrepreneur – Lanre Adisa

Lanre Adisa is the founder of Noah’s Ark, a multiple award-winning marketing communication agency that redefined how advertising is perceived in Nigeria. He and his team are the brains behind the awesome Airtel ads that could pass as comic short films and a host of other visual creatives that captivates nearly every Nigerian household.

Despite building a vibrant and internationallyrecognised marketing firm ranked No. 21 Ad agency worldwide and No. 1 in sub-Saharan Africa, Adisa wouldn’t take credit for that. He says he’s ‘just a bloody copywriter.’

In this interview, he tells Business Elites Africa how he quit a good-paying job with no safety net to start Noah’s Ark, which he believed was a higher purpose. He also talks about how he landed his first client and the setbacks that followed.

at the University?

I did not know anything about advertising back in the University, but like you said, yes, I studied Linguistics and English at the University of Ilorin, Kwara State. But my genuine interest was in writing more than

anything else. Linguistics could be technical sometimes, so I didn’t find it interesting, and that was why I actually combined it with English because I was more interested in literature. Combining it with English gave me a chance to take credit for all I was doing. Having said that, because of my love for writing, I was involved in campus journalism and creative writing.

As a matter of fact, I was the editor of the creative writing club magazine before I left the University. I took over from the current MD of ThisDay newspapers, Eniola Bello. What I enjoyed the most was the creative writing class. I knew I wanted to write; I just did not know what form or shape it would

What sparked your interest in marketing communications considering you studied Linguistics and English

take. The two career options I had at the time were journalism and academia. But during my compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), one thing led to another other, and I ran into someone who was the MD of an advertising agency.

He discovered I had a flair for writing, and he encouraged me. He gave me a list of some agencies I could apply to, and I wrote to a couple of them. There was a particular one I never wrote to that opened that year in 1990. That was MC&A Saatchi & Saatchi. I got introduced to see the director, and we talked, and the next thing he asked me was when I would want to start work. I was like, ‘start work?’ I didn’t expect things to move that fast because I was observing my NYSC in Ibadan at the time. Then he said, ‘if you’re really interested in this, I’d advise you to take up this opportunity now.’ So I did my last month of service at MC&A Saatchi & Saatchi as a trainee copywriter. That was where I started, and I’ve not looked back since then because it gave me a chance to write, which was my ultimate aim. Although I struggled a bit in reconciling my love for literary writing with commercial writing, but things resolved themselves down the line.

How did your career progress from there to when you founded your company, Noah’s Ark?

First and foremost, Saatchi & Saatchi was the best way to start my career. I spent four years there. I am grateful that I started there because it was like every other Saatchi & Saatchi agency worldwide. It was the number agency globally at the time, and the mantra was ‘nothing is impossible.’ They did a lot of wonderful stuff, and those in the Lagos office felt like we were part of that big community. It’s good for a young person with raw talent to write to start from such a place. It gave me a worldview that has not departed since then.

So, after four years at MC&A Saatchi & Saatchi, it seemed like the steam was going down a little bit, and there were some managerial and management issues, so I decided to leave my job. But I did not know where to go because I couldn’t think of any other agency like Saatchi & Saatchi. So,

I resorted to freelancing for close to one year. I was offering my copywriting skills to interested agencies. That one year gave me freedom and time to reflect and think. I came into advertising with the infatuation to write, but the one year made me realise the importance of my role regarding the brands I’ve had the opportunity to work with. It is a responsibility, but people don’t seem to know that you could actually take a brand up or down.

So, for an existential reason, I had to return to the advertising agency setting because I was going to get married in 1995 and needed to put food on the table, and freelancing was not doing that for me. I just took the next available advertising job to get back into the industry. But I became a wiser person. The one-year break was a blessing for me. I will advise people that if they are at a crossroads in life, they should just take a break because it really worked for me. I came back a different person.

I took a job at Rosabel Advertising agency and spent six months there, the shortest I ever did anywhere. This was because when I was ready to return to the industry, I spoke to some gentlemen

I was consulting for who used to be at Saatchi & Saatchi. I asked them to employ me, but they said they couldn’t afford to hire me at the time because they were just starting their agency.

They were the ones that even recommended that Rosabel might be a good fit for me. That was how I joined Rosabel. Two months later, the gentlemen came back and said can we hire you now?

I said, but I gave you guys a chance, it would be very rude of me to

leave now because I just joined them, so I told them to give me till the end of the year because I joined Rosabel in July and I left there in December 1995.

So I joined Franchise Communications in January 1996, left in 1997 for Insight Grey, and resumed there on April 1, 1997. I left Franchise because I wanted something bigger. I felt the agency wasn’t giving me enough challenge. I had too much free time on my hands, and I needed a bit more of that energy.

I had an interesting time at Insight. I joined them as a senior copywriter, a step lower than where I had left. It was actually a downgrade, but I told them to drop the title and call me a copywriter. After doing that for a year, I was promoted to copy group head role, which was a managerial position, and subsequent year I was made the deputy creative director. After two years of joining Insight, I was basically co-managing the department, which probably spoke to how they saw my performance.

By Dimeji Akinloye

I left Insight eventually in 2003 to join TBWA Concept. They were the guys handling MTN back then. They still work on MTN now, interestingly. So I joined the company as a creative director in 2003 and left in 2008 as an executive creative director to start Noah’s Ark.

I just felt that I needed to do some impactful things that would represent my generation and bring Nigeria closer to that conversation because we were not doing enough.

If you look at Africa, for instance, Southern Africa is represented by South Africa, Kenya, of late, is representing East Africa and in North Africa, there is Egypt and Tunisia but when it comes to West Africa, we are not pulling our weight.

First and foremost, I never had an ambition to start an agency. I told you about my experience at Saatchi & Saatchi. All it did was broaden my horizon, so I have never seen myself as being limited to where I am. I have always been concerned about what we contribute to the body of work globally, even more so today, with a sense of urgency.

When I was going to leave TBWA, we were a leading agency in terms of our creative output. So technically speaking, I had no reason to leave because I had a good job and I was number two, and they gave me equity in the business. But I felt that the environment needed some more competition. So in 2007, when I turned 40, I started nursing this idea of “what’s next” in my life. My subconscious mind was all about “what’s next for me”. I read a book by Jim Collins called “The 8th Habit”; even though I didn’t finish it, I read a bit that stuck with me.

The part I read says there are four things we must do in life: live, love, learn and leave a legacy. And I thought in some measure I was satisfying one or two of those things but maybe not too well. But ‘the leave a legacy’ point was it for me. What would I be known for? The generation before us had done a whole lot. Some of them never even went to University, and they did wonderfully well. But for the people in my generation, I couldn’t really point to anybody that did any wow thing or extraordinary that I could say I wish I did. Nobody was representing our generation. It was a bigger responsibility and purpose than just keeping a job somewhere. Although, in hindsight, it was a risky move to have left the job because when I left, I didn’t have any promised account, and I didn’t have anything apart from my dream.

By the way, by 2028, we will have had 100 years of advertising in Nigeria and there is little to be said about us out there. So for me, the bigger purpose was to start the agency and do things that matter. It was also going against the norm. The wisdom was that only business people, account management, and client services people could start agencies, but I was just a bloody creative copywriter. I wanted an agency that would inspire other people, and maybe we could start a new era for our industry, and that was the motivation to start Noah’s Ark.

You mentioned you had no clients when you started; how did you get your first client?

That is very interesting, and that is why I tell people that in everything that you do, even if you don’t have money in the bank, physical cash and all, you need to have a lot of money in your bank account of goodwill. Everything you do really adds up to that, and there is something about the planet aligning for you when the time is right.

When I decided to start an agency, I got a call from a friend who used to be a client when I was at Insight. They had a campaign they had started with an agency on TV, and they needed to extend it to other platforms and had a challenge. So his boss had told him to look for a consultant to work with them on the campaign.

So he called me to say that they were going to throw a pitch and asked if I was still at TBWA, I said yes, and he said the agency was invited to that pitch. I told him that I was on my way out of TBWA to start my own

agency, but I would link him to the people in charge at TBWA to take care of the pitch.

About three days later, he called me and asked, ‘are you serious you are leaving the agency’ and I said yes. He then said I should see him in his office and gave me my first brief. We executed it, and it turned out great. They all loved it, and it was out there on the billboard. We started working for them on a project basis. As a matter of fact, that piece of work also won us our first Life Award the following year.

We took on different projects in the first year, but it all seized in the second year. It looked like the end of the road. So I went knocking on the door of a former client with whom I had a very good business relationship. We got talking, and he said they are too happy with the agency handling their brand and said if you don’t mind, we would like to split the account into two. While the conversation was going on, he just said we could have the whole account if I didn’t mind. I accepted it, and that was how we started handling the Indomie brand in 2009. We did a whole lot with them that really opened the door for the agency.

People say Nigeria is a hostile business environment. Have you had moments you felt like giving up on all of this?

Never. But the truth is that it’s easy to always feel like it’s the end of the road, but the troubles in our industry are universal.

You have had a robust employee career; why did you think it necessary to start your own company?

There are four things we must do in life: live, love, learn and leave a legacy.

I’m in touch with some of my colleagues abroad, and I can tell you we all face the same problems but in different dimensions. It might be a bit harder somewhere than the other, but it’s the same problem. The most important thing is how you stay on top of your game even though we now have all sorts of platforms. I don’t think it has ever come to a point where I thought it was too much to handle. I feel excited every day because that is what we are made for - to face challenges and find solutions to them. Something is wrong if a day comes and we don’t have anything to challenge us.

What failure have you experienced during your journey, and did you handle it?

There is a part of our story that is very interesting. Very early in the life of the business, we had an office at Motorways Centre in Lagos. I think the company was about two years at the time (we’re 14 now). So we wanted to vacate that office because it wasn’t conducive for our business. We took another place at Magodo, Ketu area of Lagos, and we paid for two years, but when we wanted to move in, the landlords in that neighbourhood said they didn’t want an office in the community.

So we couldn’t move into that place, and we couldn’t move back to where we were coming from. I had to take the business to my house. I moved the team there, and we converted my living room, garage and BQ to an agency overnight. We decided on a Sunday, and by Monday, we started working. For the one month we spent in my house, we actually worked better than when we were at Motor Ways. So it’s not so much about the failure, it’s how you deal with it, how you respond to it, and what kind of team you have behind you.

We’ve seen a lot of other stuff – you pitch for businesses, you win some, you lose some. When I was at TBWA, the company had a near-death experience. One day, two of our big clients, MTN and Virgin Nigeria, who contributed close to 70% of our business, wrote to say they were taking their businesses away. We got letters from the two clients on the same day. It was almost conspiratorial. I had two pay cuts that year, but we survived it. We bounced back from it. So the problem is not the failure, it’s your disposition to it that matters. It’s okay that something doesn’t happen the way you want.

What do you think are the qualities of a good entrepreneur?

I think it’s always important that you are driven by more than just surviving. There must be a bigger reason why you’re doing what you’re doing because when you’re tested, that is one thing that keeps you going.

What are the lessons you have learnt about entrepreneurship?

First and foremost, I’m an accidental entrepreneur. But I have come to accept it, and I enjoy it. The lesson for me is the fact that you’re nothing without people. Beyond the people, the culture also matters, and you can’t impose or decree a culture. The workplace culture reflects what you believe in and what you stand for. I’ve had people leave Noah’s Ark and carry the agency with them because it’s in them. It’s humbling sometimes when I run into some of our former staff outside the country who tell me glowing things about our company. It’s like parenting; you live with your children every day but don’t know what you’re impacting on them until they leave your house, and you get feedback from other people. So the people, the culture, and relevance are important.

Relevance means you have to keep learning, unlearning, and relearning. You can never stay in one spot. My analogy is this; “I’ll rather be a squatter in the hostel than have a mansion off campus.” This is what guided me when I was at the University. I want to be where things are happening. Relevance would mean attracting the best clientele because, without those guys, you’re nothing.

For instance, when we got Airtel’s account, we were not expecting it. They just invited us to a pitch, and later they told us that they have been monitoring the Life Awards for a while and were looking at the agencies making a difference, and that was why they invited us to the pitch. It wasn’t because I knew anybody there. We’ve been working with them for almost seven years now, and we know what we have done, with all sense of modesty, to the point that it has redefined what telco and other brands can be.

By Dimeji Akinloye

An Entrepreneur Must be Ready to Fall Down and Always Get up Again - Nicole Capper

Primarily professional networks. I was in the nutraceutical industry for some time, so naturally, the initial client base came from there. As our successes grew, so did our profile and referrals to other industries started coming in. As our clientele in each sector grew, so did our brand. So, whilst we did invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and used social media well, our primary marketing was via network meetings, publication of thought leadership pieces and diligence when referred. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.

What would you say ensure your success in this business?

Nicole Capper is the Managing Director of MANGO-OMC, one of South Africa’s fastestgrowing public relations and marketing agencies. Within seven years in business, the CapeTown-based brand had expanded to other cities. However, one of the most challenging times in the life of the company was when she had to take 100% ownership of the business from a partnership arrangement.

Nicole shared her journey with Business Elites Africa in this interview. She talks about failure, marketing strategies and the biggest mistake she made when she started her business.

Did you set out to be a Public Relations professional from the onset or stumbled upon it along the way? Share your growth story with us.

My career actually kicked off many decades ago as a Brand Manager within the world of Nutraceuticals. Public Relations was one of my responsibilities, and I worked with an agency for product launches whilst also directly engaging with the media. It was an element of my job that I loved, and when I left the company I’d been with for some time, I ventured into freelance PR with the agency we had employed. I took to it like a duck to water, and although I subsequently went back into brand management a year post-my-next-job, I left and started my own one-woman agency. This grew very quickly, and within seven years, we had satellite offices in two different cities and a head office in Cape Town. I took full ownership of the agency from my business partner in 2012, and pre-pandemic, we were making a name for ourselves by truly understanding integrated communications.

It is knowing that you will always be learning and being humble. The nature of communication is that it is ever-changing, and the second you become complacent or arrogant, you are almost ensuring your own demise. Another extremely important value is that of ethical collaboration. I have always believed there is enough work for everyone, and we collaborate widely, even with competitors, and always with an ethical, client-centric mindset. If you prove value, you get referrals, and sometimes that value needs to come from various specialists – so why not collaborate? It has worked immensely well for MANGO-OMC. We never steal clients, we share ethically, and we add value. We, therefore, receive far bigger contracts than our size warrants, as potential clients understand that we will bring in the best and run the project efficiently. It doesn’t matter where the skill comes from as long as it’s there.

Have you ever felt like quitting, and how do you move on regardless?

I’m sure that everyone in communications has felt like quitting. It’s the fourth most stressful career to have! The only way through those long dark nights of the soul is self-care. Operating on deadlines daily,

What strategies did you first use for marketing in your business?

with many different clients and demands, requires energy, clarity and health. You cannot guarantee those without a work-life balance. To anyone in communications, it’s a good practice to start that early and stick to it. Burnout is very real, and the balance may be difficult to keep, but it’s essential.

What are the challenges you’ve had to surmount in your journey?

The single biggest one was probably moving from a business partnership to sole ownership. Very important lessons were learned there as I was the engine room and not the face of the business. So, building a personal brand from almost scratch was extremely challenging. Communications is usually the first item on the business agenda to get slashed in challenging times, so recessions, political volatility and an unprecedented pandemic affect business opportunities and sustainability. In this business, proactivity is key. It is important to have an ear to the ground at all times and be able to proactively pivot as required. As the digital era exploded, if we had not had that value system, we would not have survived the transition from traditional PR to digital communications without that value system. However, not only were we prepared, but we were also implementing way before many other agencies were.

How have your priorities changed from when you first started?

Probably not that much. I have also been client-centric, so giving value to clients and media (which I view as clients) has been and remains my biggest priority.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently from when you first started?

I would have immediately hired very good accountants!

Why is PR so important in the life of a business or organisation?

Any business or organisation needs to understand that consumers and stakeholders have a relationship with them. The days of shouting messages at your target audiences from a mountaintop are long gone. People can choose what they listen to, read or view and when. So, if your brand is not engaging, mirrors the value systems of your audiences, and is not being seen in the right place, at the right time, with the right message, then you’re not competitive. In the congested marketplace of today, that’s a death knell.

How do you develop branding or PR strategies for organisations?

With a lot of research, internally and externally. The most important thing to know is what the business aims to achieve within the next two years. And then to dig deep and find as much detail as possible. Tech is magical, it gives us access to so many analytics, so my start is always deep diving. And then to extrapolate a strategy from a holistic understanding of the business itself, who their target audiences should be (or are), and how to reach them. A very important element of any branding or PR strategy is

truly understanding the business (including their resource) and writing clear, realistic strategy that they can implement. I am often asked to revise strategies that are impossible documents and put forward suggestions that are inappropriate for the client’s resources or the environment in which they operate. I do not ever produce strategies such as those. They need to be achievable and pragmatic.

How do you deal with failure?

By understanding that there is a lesson in everything. Any failure results in a comprehensive debrief of what we have learnt. This is not only to avoid repeating any failure but also to ensure that there is constant learning.

What’s unique about your company?

Probably the fact that we are so collaborative. We collaborate with the client and often become part of the team. We collaborate with their existing suppliers and our own network to bring specialists to the table where required (and more). It takes a certain type of creativity combined with pragmatism to get that right. And it looks like we do that right.

What advice would you give to someone trying to build a career in PR?

Find a good mentor and stick with them for a bit. Too many people enter PR with the idea of swiftly climbing the ranks. That results in an ill-rounded career experience and a severe lack of holistic skills. To consistently learn from the best and to recognise your own limitations whilst acknowledging your skills is vital in the PR game.

What, in your opinion, are the qualities a good entrepreneur must possess

Tenacity, resilience and a very good sense of humour. Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It is not an easy road, even though it’s very fulfilling. Without the ability to fall down and always get up again, entrepreneurs would not exist!

By Dimeji Akinloye

Nigeria is a Better Place to Live in

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Dr. Yetty Oyinlola Ogunnubi

Yetty Oyinlola Ogunnubi is one of Nigeria’s leading Public Relations professionals and the founder of The YD Company a part of YD Limited, a hybrid PR firm in Lagos. Her career path in the creative industry was cast in stone as she was born to a family of artists – both parents are exterior decorators. Some of their iconic works are unmistakable on several monumental buildings across Nigeria.

Yetty D, as her minders fondly call her, was blazing the trail in the African fashion space while she lived in London, but PR found her along the way, and she never looked back. However, she incorporated her first love, fashion, into her marketing communications career path.

In this interview, she talks about building a successful business in Nigeria and makes a valid case for the country’s systemic failure, which has forced Nigeria’s best minds to make it their life’s mission to relocate abroad.

Unmasked, a platform showcasing Africans in the diaspora in the fashion industry.

As the producer, I also had to do the press articles, get press members involved, and push the whole production. From there, I worked with Princess Ronke Ademiluyi, who recently became a queen to the Ooni of Ife, King Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi of the Ile Ife kingdom in Nigeria.

We worked together on the African Fashion Week in London. From there, she invited me to come on board for Africa Fashion Week London and Nigeria as the Communications Director. That is where my journey to fullscope PR started.

No, doing Africa Fashion Week for four years, people started engaging me, and brands began calling me and asking, ‘can you work on our brand in terms of visibility?’ Then, in 2016, I left Africa Fashion Week to establish YD, which used to be YD Agency, and that is where the journey of running an agency started.

It would seem Fashion was your passion. Considering you accidentally stumbled on PR, and they say being passionate about what you do is important in business, did PR grow on you?

Yes, I started as a fashion entrepreneur and am now a PR consultant. My journey to that is because when I owned my label (Yetty D) back in the UK, I became my own marketing person, my graphics person, and my website designer. I was doing it all by myself because I was messed up by some of the people I had contracted to do some of the work. I had to learn how to do those things. From doing that, I became a producer for Uber Africa

I guess I am passionate about creating. The journey did not start fully until I moved back to Nigeria in 2013. I love creating and am passionate about that, so that has transcended into PR where I love to nurture whatever brand we work with. I am passionate about seeing the brands’ growth, and being passionate about the growth of the brand you work with translates to being passionate about PR - nurturing the brand, curating it and making it a brand to be reckoned with in whatever specific industry. Fashion is even one of the many industries we work with at the agency. We also work with real estate, hospitality, to corporate bodies.

I wouldn’t say I marketed the agency. There was a transition period. The soft landing was the

Your entrepreneurship journey started in fashion; how did you end up in Public Relations?

So, was that when you established the YD company?

How did you first market the business? How did you tell people who had known you as a fashion entrepreneur that you had started a PR agency?

other things I had done aside from Fashion. Whilst I was into Fashion in the UK, I also contributed to many productions. I used to own a platform, Yetty D Fashion Show, where I showcased fashion designers and artists in various industries for the yearly fashion show. We did this for four years. So it was more like everything was in preparation for me being in PR. It wasn’t so much of a marketing process for YD.

It was something that people knew me for indirectly, but eventually, when we started the agency, it was easy because I am a creative myself, and one thing I enjoyed doing which makes me different is the branding aspect. So it was easy to tell people, and they started telling others about YD. Through this journey, we built many good relationships, and I’d say these people are my chief marketers. I do not like talking about what I do because I speak about other people a lot, so it’s easier for other people to market than for me to market the agency.

As someone who was running a business in the UK and then relocating to Nigeria to run a business, what are the challenges when you compare both environments?

Well, there are so many challenges, and like I also say to people, it’s not easy on the other side, either. There are limitations over there too. There is only so much you can achieve, but there are so many opportunities in Nigeria.

What are the limitations in the UK, if I may ask?

One part of my industry in Nigeria is the entertainment industry, which has activities almost every day of the week. There is the avenue to achieve more over here but there are also limitations with how fast you can achieve your goals in terms of resources and Lagos traffic. In the UK, I can attend up to six onsite meetings in a day but over here, unless it’s a virtual meeting, I’ll struggle to attend two.

Electricity is also an issue in Nigeria, but luckily, we are trying to find ways around all these. People now use solar or inverters. Another thing is the increasing cost of living, but if you look closely, you’d see that the situation is the same abroad too. It’s a global problem. Nigeria’s problem is more of a lack of enabling environment for business owners from the government side. The cost of running a business is quite high, which is the restriction here.

environment, you tend to get used to the better living condition. At some point, I questioned why I came back. But I have a couple of friends who have never left the shores of Nigeria, and they are achieving great things.

They encouraged me to stay, and I told myself I had to make it work if I had friends who hadn’t left this country and achieved much. I said, ‘I was born and bred here; this is my home.’ People do not understand that you actually somehow get it easy over here. You can easily fall back on many things when you are home around family members. You have people you can easily call on, but if you move to the other side of the world, you are there by yourself, except you are from a wealthy family where they can always pull through for you, but you will be in a society where you will constantly fend for yourself. You cannot even be found not able to pay your rent at the end of the month. The good thing there is, if you work, you will be able to enjoy the basics, but this is not the case over here. This is not the case in Nigeria; you have to earn a certain amount before you can afford three square meals and pay your bills.

You do a lot of work with budding entrepreneurs. What common mistakes have you seen Nigerian entrepreneurs make?

Ironically, many people like you who have lived abroad and done business abroad are seeing opportunities in Nigeria and coming back home. In contrast, those living in the country want to go to the west for greener pastures. What do you think is the problem?

Let me just say some people see the opportunities, and I will give you an example. When I first moved back, I found it very frustrating with the environment because over there, there is 24 hours’ power supply. By the way, I lived in Nigeria for most of my life before I relocated. But when you leave a place for about 15 years for a better

I will say a lot of entrepreneurs are doing well. I will say maybe a lot of startups need to be educated on having a more collaborative spirit; it is essential in running a business. For example, perhaps you do not have enough Funding to start; you could start anyway if you have the right relationships.

When I say collaboration, I am talking about building good relationships with people who are essentially adding value to your business.

Let’s take Fashion as an example; if you own a fashion house, sell good clothes, and want to promote them, you don’t really need to spend money. Most people want to be paid for the service they render to you, but if you have good relationships, you can

At some point, I questioned why I came back to Nigeria. But I have a couple of friends who have never left the shores of Nigeria, and they are achieving great things.

have a barter arrangement. It’s also about understanding your value. What problem are you solving? People need to understand the value proposition, and knowing what you are bringing in.

I see many people entering business just because Mr. A has gone into the business. You want to open a restaurant because someone did it and is doing well, but do you have what it takes? Do you have the resources to run a successful restaurant? The other person might have built a team to run it, but you are just doing it because you saw others doing it successfully without you having the resources.

You are only doing that business because everybody is doing it, not because you are passionate. You’re not a chef or a business owner who wants to solve a problem or have good food served to your customers. What problem are you solving? What do you want to achieve? I think these are basic things entrepreneurs need to understand.

Many startups reach out to us, but we can’t take them on because I feel their business is not coming from a place of passion. It’s not coming from a place of trying to solve a problem, and then it becomes difficult for me to sell you as a brand because I am not confident you are doing this business to make an impact. You are just doing this business because you can.

Some will say if you are solving

a problem, you don’t need to be passionate about the business. We have seen people build successful companies, not necessarily because they are passionate about the business. What’s your take on this?

If people run a successful business, they are running it based on three things: you have good hands on deck for your business, you are a great entrepreneur, meaning you love your money and you know how to multiply your money. Maybe you are not passionate about the industry but at least you are passionate about being an entrepreneur. They are two different things.

You are all about the money, which means you will hire hands that would provide goods and services that can then translate into sales for the business. But there is no way you will run a company if you are not passionate about making money and being successful in that business. If you hire anybody who is not diligent to run your business, it will never grow.

If you have a restaurant, for example, and you just opened it for opening sake, and you don’t hire the right chef; instead, you hired somebody untrained to cook for you, there will never be consistency in the food. The food may be tasty today and not tasty tomorrow. You will lose customers. But when you hire the right chef, there will be consistency in what they deliver, and you will have returning customers. That is not you;

you are neither the chef nor the provider, but if you have provided the business and hired the right hand to deliver the services, the business will be successful.

You have run the business for seven years, are there times you feel like giving up?

Yes, that has happened several times. It’s never easy. I think, maybe, a month ago, I was still in that mood. There are days I ask myself, why am I doing this? Why can’t I go and be somewhere else? But beyond my clients, I have people that rely on me to motivate them. For example, we had backto-back events in August and September, and October and we had to show up correct. I’m talking about different clients. Nobody cares whether you are doing the same event for another client. They want you to pay attention to theirs. Just imagine handling multiple accounts and doing big things for each of them simultaneously. It can be overwhelming, but the good thing is I do not let that get to me while I’m still working, but after the whole thing, I can tear up. Those moments will always come.

How do you get past the low moments?

Understanding that you have the responsibility of other people on you is important. I’m never a selfish person. I have a team and colleagues that I know dedicate their time to this business. We have clients that entrusted us with their brand. I keep going if I think about all these people that look up to me. But ultimately, I know I need to be an impactful person, and for me to be an impactful person, I must be able to give a lot. It means from my work life to my personal life to how I do my things. I am never the one to give up, even during tough times. I can cry about it later, but I know the journey will never be easy.

Yes, I would sometimes say I can’t do this anymore, and in the next few minutes, I will say I still have these two or three things to do. We are all human. Nothing good comes easily, even if you are wealthy and have everything. There are still going to be some bottlenecks. You just need to have the mindset that you’ll overcome whatever comes your way.

By Simeon Onoja

You’ll Only Excel in Africa’s PR Space if You Can Adapt to Local Needs -

Ahmed Kotb

What’s the most unique thing about PR in Africa?

Africa consists of 54 countries, each with its unique media landscape. This is due to the diversity in media ownership and the availability of unpaid and paid coverage depending on each market.

Some areas in each country enjoy access to Radio, TV, print and internet, while others don’t, and localising media content is harder in Africa than other continents due to the different views and interests in each market’s unique culture.

Cultural differences and rapid technological and economic growth in Africa are very important to take into account in any communication strategy, making the need for quality public relations essential.

Africa is filled with opportunities for communications and public relations with its rapid economic and social development, but only for those willing to adapt to the local needs and approach the market accordingly.

Ahed Kotb is an Egypt-based journalist, communications and PR professional. He has years of experience cutting across institutions and organisations. We caught up with Kotb, who provides deep insights into what it takes to excel in Africa’s public relations space.

that could deliver high-quality education equal to that which can be found in the best public universities.

Hence, there was a need for a communication and media relations strategy, beginning with a strategic message development that included strong content generation and public relations efforts to engage the public and stakeholders.

Public relations in Africa needs to take into account the interpretation of local people, find the right language and tone, and address their specific needs wisely. Thus, employing local talents would sometimes be more effective than just hiring a foreign consultant, which is something that can often work elsewhere.

I started working at Ahram Canadian University at a time when there was a great shift in higher education in Egypt. It was a time that private educational universities were striving to gain public trust as entities

These efforts included special events that engaged current and potential national and African students, local and international partners, meetings with different media outlets, and writing press releases to convey necessary information about the latest projects, initiatives, and achievements.

Understanding the diversity in Africa with its various ethnic groups, especially cultural and religious practices, is very important when planning a campaign to make sure no one is offended and to stay socially responsible.

Caring about reputation is extremely important in Africa, especially with the

Q: What was it like handling communications and PR for Ahram Canadian University?

ongoing changes and growth potential of many African countries. Political, cultural, and socio-economic issues in Africa are complex and diverse. A careful understanding of these issues will contribute to the effectiveness of public relations objectives.

Do you see a common ground for journalism and PR in Africa?

Partnership and rivalry define the relationship between journalism and public relations in Africa. However, highlighting key differences and similarities is important.

Although they both gather information to present to the target audience, their motives can differ. Journalists don’t focus specifically on a particular target most of the time, as they think of the direct interest of the public when they publish their work. On the other hand, public relations practitioners have a specific goal, such as convincing their target audience of an idea, brand, product, or service.

One of the main differences between both professions is objectivity. Although sometimes we see journalism take a stance on a certain issue, the norm is that an objective approach should always be taken. Public relations on the other hand are normally subject as convincing the target audience with an idea, brand, product or service is the ultimate goal.

However, both professions share the need to communicate properly, research and gather information that is relevant to the target audience and attend to their needs, and have good writing skills.

Journalists and public relations professionals in Africa both constantly communicate with the public and tell their stories while building credibility and trust with the audience. They both also try to present their information in a

Have you ever felt like quitting, and how did you persevere?

To be honest, I like being challenged, and I have never thought about quitting. However, there are times, especially during crises, when you ask yourself if there is something you have missed or if there is something you couldn’t do, but these questions only drive

me to develop and do more research or be more prepared for similar or even harder

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently when you first

Of course, I would have focused more on social media platforms as opposed to traditional media. When I first started practising communication and public relations, social media use was rising, but not yet at a level with the effect and power of traditional media.

I would have studied social media more deeply and built better digital media understanding and use, which is something I have done later through a digital marketing diploma.

Social media is a very important tool for public relations and journalism, as it allows for reaching and interacting with audiences more quickly and effectively. They can even reach new audiences through specific targeting and amplify the effectiveness of a public relations campaign.

Why is PR so important in the life of a business or organisation?

Businesses and different types of organisations need public relations to develop and maintain their reputation and help achieve their goals. They need to learn how to listen to the needs of the community in which they operate and communicate on a regular basis accordingly.

Understanding and adapting to the needs of the market is essential in any business practice nowadays.

To do this, public relations practitioners need to understand how the business community is working and adapting to the changing economic and political landscapes and how local media is changing and adapting to that as well.

Change and transformation in economies, societies, technologies, and cultures are happening fast during this era of globalisation. These can provide benefits or have negative effects on many organisations and even countries on a bigger scale. The role of public relations here is important in keeping up with the developments and acting accordingly in an attempt to preserve identities and reputations.

Developments in the communications industry are ongoing and affecting many sectors of the market, and digital media activity, especially on social media, has become an integral part of any successful public relations practice.

ways to communicate with them. Social media listening and monitoring here is very important.

Studying the competition well and understanding my organisation and the competition’s strengthen and weaknesses is critical in the effectiveness of the PR plan and preparing the right tactics, which include preparing key messages, issuing press releases, social media posts, events and ceremonies, and engaging partners and the public.

Finally and most importantly is measuring the results and careful analysis of the traffic and feedback to better help in preparing future strategies and plans.

What advice would you give to someone trying to build a career in PR?

Learning about professional ethics and work integrity is essential, as practitioners should strive for a sustainable way of practicing their profession and maintain a trustworthy image among their clients and the public as well. Understanding the job description clearly and the objectives expected are important in making the work effective, as is studying the market in which you work.

Also, being technologically updated and keeping up with new trends is very important. A deep understanding of how the digital atmosphere, mainly social media and devices, is critical in reaching the right audience effectively to deliver the intended message.

professional, working in journalism and public relations. I have to keep up with the news, trends, and changing policies internally and externally.

In addition to the stress imposed by tight deadlines, stress can happen when working on specific topics in journalism that are sometimes controversial. I have always tried to find a balance in reporting that gives the public their right to know the truth without siding with one party over the other. Balanced reporting gains respect and credibility from all parties involved, even if it is stressful at times when you feel one side deserves sympathy.

On the other hand, working in public relations can sometimes be more stressful as the number one priority is to preserve the business or organization’s reputation.

However, I have always strived to balance that with preserving credibility among the public and maintaining trust with the target audience by being transparent about facts and actions taken regarding some controversial issues and during crises. Timely communication is critical here.

The stressful part here was to make it fast and effective, and to avoid the spread of disinformation and further escalation, especially when dealing with younger generations who are technology-savvy and know how to use social media as a powerful tool for engagement and to drive action sometimes.

First, I need to outline my communications and public relations goals and align that with the objectives of my organisation and the needs of the public or target audience.

Researching is very important when creating a PR strategy. Knowing the target audience well is essential in choosing the best tactics and preparing for crises. The more specific information I know about the target audience, the more I understand their needs and behaviours, and plan effective

Respecting the public’s intelligence and being transparent to a great extent will help build a strong relationship and avoid the harmful effects of disinformation. You should engage the public in how a problem, if any, is being dealt with instead of denying it and leaving it to the public’s imagination and the spread of disinformation which would eventually lead to hurting the organisation’s image and reputation.

How do you deal with stress?

I have been trying to handle stress on many levels during my career as a communications

I have always tried to maintain my habit of reading the news first thing in the morning and throughout the day, as well as keeping up with comments and feedback on social media on issues related to my organisation’s sector, in an attempt to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of our organisation and the competition continuously. This has helped anticipate potential crises and enhance the relationship with the public.

Being calm and never considering criticism personally is also an important aspect of handling stress.

How do you develop branding or PR strategies for organisations?

By Ruth Okwumbu

Steve Babaeko: The Man Known for X3M Creativity

– Steve Babaeko

Ahighly accomplished entrepreneur with about three decades of experience up his sleeves, Steve Babaeko, without argument, is a significant force in Nigeria’s branding and Public Relations space. He’s the

founder of X3M Ideas, the digital advertising agency that was acclaimed “one of Nigeria’s fastest-growing communications brands in 2017, He’s also the President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN).

“If you call yourself extreme, you shouldn’t be caught doing the safest work in the country. Your ideas must be seen to represent the name you bear. So the ideas have to be on the edge, and they have to be extreme.”

Babaeko was born on June 1, 1971, to a very modest family in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, and he was raised in the same town. As he grew into the age of reasoning, the young Babaeko realised, quite painfully, that his parents could not afford to give him some of the things children of his age enjoyed. This would become the core of his driving desire to succeed in life.

As a child, he was attracted to the screens and imagined himself pursuing a career in TV presenting. He attended the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he bagged a B.A in Theatre Arts (Drama) in 1994. He applied for and got an internship with a Broadcast organisation, and this gave him first-hand access to the lives presenters then were living. The pay was very modest, and given his background, Steve Babaeko knew he would not want to spend his adult years scrounging and depriving himself of the luxuries he desired.

Rather than give up and settle altogether, Babaeko discovered a new dream which would help him get what he wanted, and he set out to pursue the new dream in the creative industry. A B.A in Drama already gave him a bit of a background, so he was confident that it would not be an entirely unfamiliar ground to him.

The journey of no-return

When Steve Babaeko left Kaduna for the bustling city of Lagos, going back without results was not an option for him. The 24-year-old was ready to give all it took to break into the creative industry. He had no place to stay, so he squatted in a hotel with a chef for two years. That was how long it took him to land his first job as a trainee copywriter at a well-known agency in Lagos.

Babaeko worked five years with MC&A Saatchi & Saatchi, then another five years with Prima Garnet Ogilvy (agency). At this time, there was nothing amateur about him any longer. He had grown so fast in his skills and creativity that no firm would be afraid to put him in charge. His next stop was 141 Worldwide, where he worked as a creative director for seven years.

By this time, Babaeko was both ready and qualified to run the show himself. He left to set up X3M Ideas.

X3M Ideas; a hub for extreme creativity

The quote which started this piece is an expression that conveys Babaeko’s thoughts on what creativity should be. In creating X3M Ideas, Steve Babaeko found a cooking pot to bring unlimited creativity into his work.

X3M Ideas was set up as “a full-fledged advertising company”, and soon after, a record label joined –X3M Music. Babaeko says he founded X3M Ideas with “a pretty small team of about 8 persons” after he turned 40 and “started seeing the world from a totally different perspective.” The mission of X3M Ideas was to redefine advertising in Nigeria. In line with this, Babaeko would always ask his team of talents, “Do you think this idea is extreme enough?”

Today, X3M has a staff of over a hundred people and occupies a purpose-built office complex in Lagos since 2016. It is now rated one of the top marketing firms in Nigeria and services some of the biggest companies globally. X3M now has a physical presence in five other African countries – South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, and plans to expand further.

As part of its Corporate Social responsibilities, X3M undertakes a project to rehabilitate a government school every year and hand it over to the government.

Steve Babaeko has served as CEO and Chief Creative Officer since August 2012. The grit and perseverance acquired from the days of job-hunting and squatting would later come in handy for the entrepreneurial journey into Nigeria’s advertising space.

Other stints and Awards

Steve Babaeko indeed occupies an enviable position in the Nigerian creative industry, and he’s instrumental in shaping the future of creative arts in Nigeria and beyond in his capacity as President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria.

In 2016, 2017, and 2018, Babaeko was a jury member of the New York Advertising Festival, acclaimed as “one of the oldest advertising festivals in the world.” He continues to represent Africa and Nigeria on the global stage. He has been a speaker at the Cannes Lions Festival and was conferred with the “Visiting Fellow” honours at the Henley Business School, University of Reading.

In 2019, Babaeko was named among Adweek’s top 100 Creatives in the world, (otherwise known as Most Fascinating People In Marketing, Media, and Culture). He emerged Outstanding Creative Personality of the Decade at the Marketing Edge Marketing Excellence awards (2021) held in Lagos.

Meet Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, one of the Most Experienced PR Expert in Existence

Badejo-Okusanya recalls what inspired him to choose his career path, “I didn’t know a lot about PRin fact I knew nothing about PR, but many people that saw me often said to me that I would make a good PR person.” We had a Nigerian who had been the President of the Nigerian Professional Association and had become a Minister, the late Chief Alex Akinyele, and many people said I reminded them of him. So that’s where I picked up my interest in public relations.”

In 1988, he joined CT & A, a Lagos-based advertising agency, and in 1991, within three years of his

the concept of Positive Africa by utilising the tools that are associated with public relations.

A branding elite

Yomi Badejo-Okusanya through sheer will has succeeded in providing services beyond strategic communication solutions for leading organisations and personalities such as the 1st female elected president in Africa, H.E Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.

Badejo-Okusanya has also worked with Delta State Government, JAGAL Group, Airtel Nigeria, International Monetary Funds (IMF), British American Tobacco Nigeria, Transcorp, Renaissance Group, Virgin Nigeria, Peugeot Nig Ltd, Shell and Federal Inland Revenue Service among others.

Yomi Badejo-Okusanya in his early days was much concerned with making a living for himself. He went from a comfortable life to facing hardship after the death of his father while he was still nine. He had just his mother and his six siblings.

Hence, the complications he faced made him much stronger to handle life as it came. He graduated from Igbobi College, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. He went ahead to study history at the University of Benin. Soon enough, he bagged his bachelor’s degree and was out in the market seeking a means to survive.

“At the end of my University, I had a couple of options, but I felt that I wanted to work rather than depending on my mother for money, so I asked myself, “what are the things I could do?”, he said during an interview.

stay, he ended up being the Director of the company and was also asked to head the subsidiary that focused on Marketing and Public Relations. In 1992, he went ahead and founded CMC Connect Burson Cohn & Wolfe, formerly known as CMC Connect Burson-Marsteller, in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria.

While still on the job, he became the Secretary General of the African Public Relations Association (APRA), which is the umbrella body for the practice of public relations in Africa, and was still left with the responsibility of working closely with the African Union (AU) in the areas of strategic thinking on how to improve the image and perception of Africa.

Yomi Badejo-Okusanya has a strong passion for the practise of public relations in Africa. As a result of this passion, he has also birthed an initiative that is titled, “Campaign Africa.” Through this initiative, he intends to sell

He is on the board of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), the West African Chair of the Public Relations and Communications Association and also a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR). He is widely recognised as one of the top public relations professionals in Nigeria, with top expertise in Government Relations and Legislative Affairs, Perception Management, Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations and Crisis Communications.

With over 30 years of experience in the Marketing Communications industry, Badejo-Okusanya still recalls the inspiration behind his vocation.

His Awards

Due to Badejo-Okusanya’s contributions to the industry, he became a recipient of the prestigious PR Golden Eagle Award (Male), as the Most Outstanding Public Relations Person for the Year 2010.

One fun fact about Yomi Badejo-Okusanya is that he is an astute preacher of the word of God and the Resident Pastor at Grace Assembly-Island Church, Oregun, Ikeja, Nigeria.

By Ruth Okwumbu

From a Struggling Journalist to a Sought-after Publicist: How Ayeni Adekunle Turned his Life Around

Surely, it would be difficult to talk about what marketing communications has become in Nigeria in this digital age without mentioning Ayeni Adekunle –the man described in Forbes Magazine as “one of the pioneers” who led Nigeria into the digital-first strategy era of Marketing Communications. As one who seems to have gone through every career experience needed to

make one successful in marketing communications and Public Relations, it is a no-brainer that Adekunle was named Nigeria’s PR Practitioner of the Year in 2017.

It is practically impossible to ascribe the word ‘failure’ to him even though Adekunle, in his profile, describes himself as a failed microbiologist, failed musician, and a failed author.

A lover of books and music, Ayeni Adekunle grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He bagged his first degree in Microbiology from the University of Ibadan, Oyo State. His writing career started after secondary school at Encomium Weekly where he joined as a showbiz columnist and later as a feature editor with Hip Hop World Magazine. He worked with ThisDay publication, later joined The Punch as a columnist, and then worked with The Africa Report.

The Mar-comms entrepreneur

In 2006, Adekunle founded Black House Media (BHM) to provide public relations services for clients. Being the problem solver he is, Ayeni has converted every obstacle along the way into a business idea such that BHM has become a conglomerate with several subsidiaries, including; ID Africa, Plaqad, Newsroom, 234Star, Nigerian Entertainment Today (NET), Orin, NET Shop and NEC.

He founded Nigeria Entertainment Today (NET), a newspaper and web portal dedicated to reportage of entertainment in Nigeria and Africa. As a writer, his works specialised in art and literature, especially music, and his credibility and respectability naturally rubbed off on NET. The online platform is now branded TheNETng.

Adekunle is also the convener of Nigeria Entertainment Conference NEC Live, “an annual deliberative conference of Nigerian entertainers drawn from all sectors of creative industry, media and economic policymakers which discusses industry development issues.”

Plaqad was built as the software technology unit of BHM in 2017. This technology targets solving the communication challenge, and seeks to use specific geographic locations, distributed teams, and Plaqad technology, to help consumers and clients no matter where they are; no matter what language they speak; and no matter how they access information.

How ID Africa came about

Recounting how he founded Info Digital Africa, Ayeni Adekunle would say that it was really a child of necessity. BHM was growing and establishing its place, but it would have been very myopic to ignore the new media and digital technology that seemed to be speedily creeping in.

“Clients needed more help and hand-holding as social media became ubiquitous, and smartphone technology was being transformed. I was worried about not being ready enough and being left behind. We were one of the first companies in our market to have a website, to get on social media, but as things unfolded, I became agitated not just for our company, but for the industry. So-called digital agencies were emerging, clients were talking SEO, and CMS platforms were becoming a thing. It was clear that having an ‘IT’ department with folks good with networking, and troubleshooting would no longer cut it.”

He then set up ID Africa, first as a Digital Agency owned by BHM, to help clients better meet their digital needs. He invited a freelance web developer to join as co-founder and CEO, and for the next couple of years, ID Africa was incubated as a BHM Digital department. By the time the company was ready to go live on its own, digital marketing had taken its place as a multibillion-dollar industry; and BHM was already an industry leader.

Over the next six years, it further solidified its stance. By 2021, ID Africa was hiring 30 people full-time, paying hundreds of vendors and freelancers, and its revenue had grown remarkably.

Honours and recognitions

Ayeni’s contributions to the marketing communications space in Nigeria are not without acclaim. The Black House Media won two awards from the Lagos State chapter of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) in the same year – Agency of the Year and Best Agency to Work. In 2018, ID Africa emerged Best PR Agency for the use of New Media, while Black House Media clinched the PR Agency of the Year category at the Brandcom Awards.

On a personal note, Ayeni Adekunle was named Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Marketing (NIMN) “in recognition of his contribution to the marketing profession.” In 2017, he was recognised as the PR Practitioner of the year by the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR); later, in the same year, he won the City People Movie Special Recognition Award.

Ayeni Adekunle is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations UK (CIPR).

15 Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore Today

Business Trends || By Joseph Ekeng

In the recent past, there has been an explosion in the internet, and mobile penetration in Africa as the continent’s mobile ecosystem evolves rapidly to keep pace with social trends. Surging urbanisation, demographic boom and steady rise in personal income have encouraged more people to join the internet bandwagon. In addition, the high rate of smartphone adoption and relatively cheaper data have been critical growth factors.

The surge is largely driven by the millennial population and generation Z, for whom the internet is an indispensable part of their lifestyle and social culture.

A recent report by GISM suggests that the fast growth in Africa will continue as the number of SIM connections might hit one billion in 2025. Nigeria represents the pinnacle of broadband penetration in the region. Between 2020 and 2021, more than 6 million Nigerians enlisted as social media users for the first time, one of the highest in the world.

Another notable report also shows that Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa are in the top five of the global ranking of countries spending the most time on the internet. Indeed, the mass convergence of users on the internet has made social media a powerful tool for social change and marketing.

According to a recent report by Global Executive Business School in South Africa, one of the great advantages of digital marketing over traditional media is the opportunity to target customers or clients on a one-on-one basis, especially those with which they have an existing relationship.

“With the introduction of digital marketing, we’ve seen a huge shift in the way that organisations engage with their customers. No longer is it necessary to communicate one message to all customers on a traditional channel like television or newspaper,” the report said.

However, to make the most of digital marketing, businesses must first monitor digital marketing trends. Digital marketing trends are valuable assets that allow brands to understand consumer behaviour and consumption patterns, so they can

develop marketing communications and product offerings that resonate with market expectations. For example, due to rapid smartphone adoption in Africa, mobile is the leading channel for brand engagement with customers. So what are the other digital marketing trends that have become mainstream and leading the way in brand engagement procedures in 2022?

Content marketing

Content marketing has become a top-rated channel for businesses to connect with

their customers uniquely. This involves the use of relevant content to get the attention of potential or existing customers during the different stages of the buying process. Recently, many brand managers and marketing executives have placed a high priority on content marketing, and they allocate a sizeable portion of their marketing budget for this purpose.

This is understandable because content marketing has major benefits, including enhancement of page ranking through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). More so, statistics from Content Marketing Institute indicate that content marketing costs 62 per cent less than outbound marketing and generates three times more returns no on investment.

Video content

In 2019, a major tech news website in Nigeria published a finding, showing that online video content was not yet a big deal in the country. But fast forward to 2021, after Covid compelled a global shutdown, which left everyone at the mercy of the internet, video content has become one of the best ways to consume content on the internet. For example, Netflix, whose subscriber base in Nigeria was just around 300, 000 in 2016, quickly climbed to over 2 million users in 2021, and it is projected to hit close to 6 million by 2026. Similar growth patterns have been observed in other video streaming platforms like Amazon, Showmax, Prime etc.

Short video

Between work, family and personal hobbies, most consumers today are busy. More so, there’s so much on the internet calling for their attention. Long contents are no longer fashionable. This is why short video contents tend to get more views. Studies have shown that 68% of viewers will watch a video entirely if it is not more than 60 seconds. This change in consumption patterns is why platforms like Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram etc., have become very popular and attractive to brands seeking engagement.

Comedy skits

Video is a powerful medium, but comedy videos are even more powerful because they offer additional entertainment value. This is why comedy skit producers like Brother Shaggi, Macaroni, Mark Angel Comedy etc., are in high demand by brands.

Their comedy video skits on social media garner huge views and engagements and offer immense marketing opportunities. Many of them have partnered with major brands to use their platforms for marketing purposes.

Live videos streaming

Live streaming content is growing around the world, including in Africa. The unique connection, intimacy and authenticity that it offers is why people are drawn to it. Reports have shown that people spend more time watching live videos, most of which happen on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.

Influencers and Micro-influencers

The rise of micro-influencers in the digital marketing ecosystem has become more rapid in recent years, partly due to the decline in the trust consumers have for brands. The influencers and micro-influencers may not have as many social media followers as the celebrities, but they have become popular and are keenly followed by their audience due to their exceptional content creation skills, authenticity and virality. They are very knowledgeable about their niches and have mastered the art of storytelling and social media, which is why their audience trusts them and happily consumes their content.

First party-data

Because a growing number of consumers are demanding online privacy, it is not enough for brands to rely on social media for consumer insights. Brands increasingly depend on first-party data to build a direct connection with existing and potential clients. This is done using SMS campaigns, survey methods, polls etc.

Email Campaign

Email Campaign has become very popular as a means of consumer engagement. Many brands use this channel to send targeted email copy/sales letters and other forms of communication to potential and existing clients.

User-generated content

User-generated content, or UGC is content generated by the consumer without interference from the brands. It can come from consumers’ internet activities like ‘ social media comments, uploaded videos, and text. This is often effective because consumers trust other people’s testimonials more than ads when making buying decisions.

Sell on social media

There has been a tweak in social media, allowing companies to use their social media platforms as direct sales points. This trend is called social commerce and is expected to become mainstream soon.

Artificial intelligence

This may sound futuristic, but AI has been with us for quite a while, and brands have found a way to deploy it for digital marketing purposes. For instance, the chat box and the live person option on the corporate website are examples of AI.

Programmatic Advertising

This platform allows brand owners to rely

on insights gained from digital consumer footprint to deploy targeted advertising messages. That means brands can identify consumers’ specific needs and interests and start engaging them based on that. This is often a more effective form of Advertising.

Personal messaging

This is a fast-growing trend in digital marketing, as brands are now increasingly engaging directly with consumers on messaging platforms like Whatsapp, WeChat etc. This allows for direct engagement and an opportunity for vital feedback that can offer critical market insight. It can also deepen the relationship between businesses, their customers, and potential clients.

Voice search

Voice search is fast evolving in the digital marketing ecosystem. It is not just more accurate, but it is convenient, especially for young people increasingly seeking new engagement methods.

Use of a TV-connected hosting platform

Indeed, more social media users are consuming videos on mobile, but it doesn’t mean they watch them on their smartphones. The rise of smart TVs has allowed people to connect their smartphones to TV to consume videos from YouTube and other social media platforms. This is a useful insight that many brands consider when making marketing decisions.

The rise of Omnichannel Marketing

The omnichannel strategy is relevant because consumers use a variety of channels at different stages of their day. For instance, consumers may begin their day with Facebook and then switch to Instagram. Then they may check their emails. On their way to work, they turn to the radio playing. On the way home, they may stop at the supermarket, see point-of-sale advertising, and listen to Spotify on their travels. At some other point, they will seek some entertainment from video streaming channels. This opens many potential touchpoints for a brand to reach consumers,

By Damilola Akinlude

ABOVE AND BEYOND

TheSocialMediaOga

TheSocialMediaOga is a SocialMediaCoach and Content Strategist who helps social media managers find their footing and equips them with all the necessary things they need to start out as freelance social media managers.

She also helps Small Business owners figure out how to use Social media the right way. She has helped hundreds of businesses and has trained over 200 social media managers who want to start a career in social media management.

Praise Philemon

Praise Philemon is an experienced brand & design specialist who leverages his background in brand strategy, consulting, visual design, art direction, marketing and communications to build and operate market-defining brands and products. With expertise in technology, financial services, and product design, he has successfully designed, built and scaled tech startups and brands. locally and internationally.

He is also an active part of communities as a design speaker (and sometimes, an educator) and community contributor, helping creatives design well.

Opeyemi Olugbemiro

Over the last 8 years+, Opeyemi has worked with founders and their teams to tell stories across different mediums, define purpose and values, and build templates that help them connect with their target audience.

His broad-spectrum experience in print, radio, and digital platforms makes me a standout partner of choice in telling brand stories (across different channels). The process includes running workshops and sprints to identify brand tones and messaging and creating blueprints that help you connect with your target audience compellingly. In simple terms, he helps build tangible relationships between you and your people (employees, stakeholders, customers, etc.) using content.

Seun Bankole is a TV Presenter and an Event Host

Her brand is all about presenting, hosting, and rendering voice services to clients. Anything that has to do with carrying an audience along, as well as social media management and page growth.

By: Oyetoun Olabisi

Bukola Sawyerr Izeogu: the Nigerian Multi-facet PR Expert Extraordinaire

God, disposes. Nobody realizes what it is like to sit here as a person running a public relations (PR) company. It’s not easy at all, but I love it.”

The making of Bukola Sawyerr Izeogu

The brain behind some renowned celebrities was born in 1974 to a Yoruba father and an Itsekiri mother. After completing her formative education, she attended the University of Lagos, where she studied Computer science and graduated in 1998.

at the University of Lagos. However, it was not until 2014 that she founded her brand, BukiHQ, a Public and Media Relations Consultancy in Nigeria.

With her years of experience, she has steered her company through every business storm to become what it is today. This, however, is not without its fair share of hiccups. Her first experience as a PR professional revealed that, contrary to her expectations, it was not a walk in the park.

Passion, indeed, is essential when starting a business. This entrepreneurial characteristic has seen Bukola Sawyerr Izeogu, a media maven, become one of the driving forces in the Nigerian public and media relations space.

Using her computer science degree, she has built a career in the media space. This has seen her become a renowned on-air personality and later transition into an entrepreneur in the public relations industry. This pivotal move saw her work with A-list personalities and brands, which has thus far earned her over thirteen years of experience in the field.

While her accomplishments are admirable, they were earned through years of hard work and perseverance. Despite the challenges, her knack for solving problems and being a fixer pulled her through.

She said, “There are good days, and there are bad days, and there are some awful days. My day depends on the kind of night any of my clients had. So if my client had a bad night, for example, and is trending when we wake up, that sets the tone for the rest of the day.

So I am either ahead of it or chasing the day. My job is typical of ‘Man proposes,

In 2009, she began her media career at Classic FM 97.3 in 2009. There, she pioneered the show “The Classic Lounge”. With her computer skills, she later became the Lead Programmer for Classic FM 97.3, Naija FM 102.7, The Beat 99.9 FM (Lagos State), The Beat 97.9 FM and Naija FM 102.7 (Ibadan). While managing this position, she became the brain behind some of the unique sounds each station is known for.

The following year, she became the director of Chocolate City Group. With the new position, she doubled as an on-air personality (OAP), lead programmer, and director of Chocolate City Group. She held the position until 2014. Although she stopped working at Chocolate City Group, she continued with her OAP and lead programming role until 2018.

While still working at the media companies, her multi-tasking ability saw her take up personal jobs that led to creating her own public relations (PR) company — BukiHQ. She believes “PR and media have always worked very closely. Our industry can’t exist without the media. Are the PR people going to write the stories? We can’t work without the journalists, who are extremely important.”

The making of public and media relations expert

Bukola Sawyerr Izeogu conceived her PR business idea while she was an undergraduate

She said, “I must have spent six hours convincing them. It was a very long session - breaking down and explaining all the different things that I would be able to do for the GRIP BOYS. That is, Yung L, Endia, and Chopstix.

Technically a bright-eyed rookie with a clear path and conviction, it was a tough day convincing these three guys that there would be a remarkable difference if I handled their PR, and they agreed in the end. They were convinced, and we got the ball rolling. Being my first believers, they remain close and dear”.

From her first success, the 48-year-old public and media relations expert went on to have different celebrities and brands in her portfolio. This includes Burna Boy, Asa, 2Face, M.I, Seyi Shay, Adekunle Gold, Mr Eazi, Timaya, Kaffy, Lagos Jazz Series, and Hennessy Artistry.

As the founder and Chief Executive Officer of BukiHQ, she also runs Edge Solutions Company, a content communications company.

he thus advises aspiring PR entrepreneurs with her experience. She says, “It is tough! ... PR requires a lot of sacrifices for which you must be prepared. I can not promise heavy monetary rewards in this field right now, but job satisfaction can be guaranteed. Hopefully, monetary gain is imminent with the growing relevance and awareness of this field”.

Profile || By Ebube Julius

How Zealous Egyptian Woman Lamia Kamel is Changing Her Country’s Narrative

How Lamia Kamel grew to the limelights

Kamel began her job as a worker for the Vodafone Company when it first opened in Egypt.

of the country’s recent economic setbacks. Up to 15% of the nation’s total output comes from tourism, which also serves as a significant source of foreign currency.

Lamia Kamel is one of the pioneers of political communications in Egypt. She has taken part in several prominent campaigns in Egypt as a communications strategist.Both the presidential election campaigns for Mr. Amr Moussa and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi benefited greatly from her contributions.

She is the CEO of Corporate Communication Plus (CC Plus), a company she founded in 2006 as a public relations agency and which has since developed into one of Egypt’s top consulting firms.

She founded Narrative PR Summit in 2016 as “Voice of Egypt,” a premier worldwide public relations business that employs global standards and operates in the local and regional markets, as a result of her desire to advance the promotion of Egypt’s story. Her movement has been widely noted and duly appreciated by the Egyptian government, and in 2021 she was appointed assistant Minister of Tourism and Antiquities for Marketing and Promotion.

Lamia Kamel earned both her bachelor and master degrees in business administration from The American University in Cairo. In London, UK, she underwent comprehensive training in creating original PR strategies and crisis management.

She later changed her profession to consulting, working with organisations including Information and Communication Technologies for Development in the Arab Region (ICTDAR), the United Nations Development Program, the American Group Insurance Company, and the Malaysian National Oil and Gas Company (Petronas), which specialises in ICT development in the Arab world.

She developed a passion for teaching and began lecturing at the International University of Egypt and the American University in Cairo (MIU). She is a strategic consultant who works with local Egyptian businesses to identify gaps and help them meet high international standards for quality.

Changing Egypt’s narrative

After 2011, Egypt’s economic, social, and political landscape underwent a significant transformation. Numerous successes were made, both in the public and private sectors. Entrepreneurs were also contributing more and more to the economic growth of the nation. This disruption led to a realisation that Egypt needed to be heard in order to tell its progressive story,

“We were under the spotlight. Local and international figures were opting for a voice and place in the country. And as someone who knows the potential we as a country possess, I felt it was my duty to give Egypt a voice. A voice to narrate its story and share others’ as well.”

Many people in Egypt are considering the tourist industry as a corrective action in light

The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Egypt believes it can handle the job, “We need to roll-up our sleeves. It’s a country, and a brand. It gives us pleasure to do our job. It is part of who we are. Tourism and hospitality is part of our Egyptian DNA. We’ve done it for years. We are documenters. We have our stories on the walls [of our ancient monuments]. That’s who we are - we are communicators,” said Lamia Kamel.

Juggling both personal and professional life

It has not being an easy feat for Lamia Kamel to balance both her personal and professional lives,

“It is undeniable that we, in the traditional societies, place huge social burdens on women and, in the case of a working woman, the challenges are more. I believe that women have developed a great skill in multitasking.

However, the key to this point is good time management and acknowledging that the family does come first.”

Despite being a working mother, Kamel has also shown undeniable strength to get the best of both worlds. She believes she is automatically implementing in her “children the importance of work, perseverance, commitment, independence, and self-reliance, as well as the significance of thinking rationally and away from any superficial judgment.”

To her, her work is positively affecting her children and, as a result, making them more open to appreciating diversity and differences.

By Dimeji Akinloye

Milkaela Mwangura: A Shinning Light in Kenya’s Marketing Communications Industry

Milkaela Mwangura is an accidental Public Relations practitioner.

As a young girl, she came first in mathematics in her school performance. So, typical of African parents, she was made to pursue a University course relevant to her academic strength, albeit against her wish. This knowledge would later be instrumental in her success in Kenya’s communications industry.

Milkaela never looked back after she was introduced to the business of PR. She’s one of the trailblazing communications strategists in Kenya and is currently the Executive Director of Eminence Global PR. In October 2022, her company won the ‘Best PR and Marketing Agency in Kenya’ award at the

Best of Karen Business Awards in recognition of her impactful work in the sector.

Milkaela Mwangura shared her story with Business Elites Africa in this edition.

Did you set out to be a PR professional or stumbled on it along the way? Share your growth story with us.

I actually stumbled on it along the way. My Background is in Applied Statistics with Computing. I was set on the statistical analysis and project management path, but in the process, I became interested in communications because my passion was in strategic management.

Growing up, I was excellent in mathematics throughout my lower and upper school

years – I was the best girl in overall school performance, an ambivert always glued to books. And even though I wanted to do strategic management at University, somehow my parents and teachers convinced me to do a course in line with mathematics because I was outstanding in that, and that’s how I found myself in statistics.

I did my undergraduate at Moi University, Kenya. After campus, I worked with an international organisation for two years while doubling as a PR consultant and a blogger. Later, when they moved my department to another county, I ventured into PR fully. Although I changed careers, statistics proved to be a strong background for my PR expertise. This is because I’m able to do extensive research and deliver informed, data-driven PR Campaigns and results that are measurable with ease to clients.

What strategies did you first use to market your business?

I used Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), referrals, direct marketing, cold calls and pitching.

What would you say ensure your success in this business?

It will be connecting with the client, maintaining a healthy relationship with the client and our ability to deliver exactly what we articulate in the proposal or even more.

Have you ever felt like quitting, and how do you move on regardless?

No, I never have. I love PR. My passion for bringing solutions and impactful change makes me tick. Even when faced with the most gruesome challenge, I still choose to continue

What are the challenges you’ve had to surmount in your journey?

Some of them are financial challenges, difficult clients, employees not being proactive, and scammers using our company to lure job seekers into odd jobs.

How have your priorities changed from when you first started?

Before, we just used to onboard any client, but nowadays, we do thorough research on a client before we decide to onboard them.

I select my clients carefully. And employees’ welfare is topmost on my priority list.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently when you first started?

I would have laid out the standard operating procedures for each facet earlier, and I would go easy with the cash flow. As for the employees, nowadays experience only doesn’t cut it. I go for the right attitude and the willingness to learn on the job.

Why is PR so important in the life of a business or organisation?

In the simplest term, PR is the backbone of any business. It is what attracts customers/ clients to your business and brings them to your doorstep. It is what connects you with your customer. It is PR that gets your message to your target market. PR nurtures and enables you to maintain relationships with your customers and other stakeholders. It is PR that cultivates growth for your brand. It is PR that builds your brand equity/image. PR protects you.

It is PR that ensures your preparedness for any unforeseen emergency/crisis. It is only through PR that your target market can reach resonance. It is PR that grows your Revenue. PR protects, enhance, and grow your company. PR is everything.

That is why Bill Gates said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I would use it on PR.”

How do you develop branding or PR strategies for organisations?

Every client is unique, so we develop customised data-driven brand strategies depending on the client’s needs/goals, industry, and target market. We use sophisticated market research and insight-driven strategy as our inception points. Most of our PR strategies are customer-centric.

How do you deal with failure?

Failure is a learning hub to refine and become better. We accept when we fail, learn from it and then re-strategise.

What’s unique about your company?

All our strategies and results are data-driven. Moreover, we look beyond money and focus on building meaningful relationships. Most of our clients become our friends. But what truly makes us stand out is our benevolence to society and the country we live in. Every year we select one charity organisation and volunteer our services to help support and bring immediate solutions through our iGive initiative.

We started the iGive initiative to enable us to give hope and care to the vulnerable such as Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Female Gender Mutilation (FGM) victims, the hungry, the ones in horrible living conditions, the addicts, the Abused and neglected children, etc. We offer some of our media relations services for different fund drives with the goals in the below sectors:

• Awareness against Substance Abuse

• Awareness against Child Abuse

& Neglect

• Poverty Eradication

• Community Development

• Sexual Reproductive Health

• Awareness against GBV

• Awareness against FGM

• Awareness and Communication amidst Pandemics

What advice would you give to someone trying to build a career in PR?

To succeed in the PR industry, you need commitment, consistency, the heart to keep learning, boldness, and pro-activeness. These qualities will make you achieve what you have never fathomed. Let your desire to bring impactful solutions drive you.

A good entrepreneur must have excellent financial management skills. He must be a risk taker but should take well-calculated risks. Consistency and the heart to listen and learn are also crucial. He must be a visionary and have the courage to face any challenge and the boldness to walk into any office/meeting. Pro-activeness, excellent communication, and leadership skills are also essential qualities. Ultimately, a good entrepreneur should lead by serving.

What, in your opinion, are the qualities a good entrepreneur must possess?

By Dimeji Akinloye

How Bewaji Adeniji Started as a PR Rookie to Becoming a Master

Bewaji Adeniji is the Head of Corporate Affairs and Strategy at CT Productions, an international media company distributing the Economist magazine globally. Before her foray into the media industry, her only goal was to start a food business. But she met a lady that introduced her to PR, and a love affair with the career path started shortly afterwards.

She speaks to Business Elites Africa about her challenging learning curve and how she mastered the art and now leading teams across the business verticals.

How did your journey into Public Relations start?

The funny thing is I never set out to be in PR let alone media, but I somehow grew to love it. At the time, I had just quit my Human Resources (HR) role in the hospitality industry, and I was looking for a part-time job while I worked out how to start a food business. After searching for the best fit, my current boss and I met, which would be the start of a beautiful working relationship. I let her know what my wants and needs were, and she did the same.

She had been in the industry for over four years before I joined, and there was a lot she had to offer in terms of mentorship. In my mind, I thought it would be simple enough, but It was not. There was a lot of learning and unlearning I had to do that also led to looking into industries that I knew nothing about, but it was

a good learning curve and pushed me to do more than I have ever done.

As someone who was generally shy professionally, this job has given me the much-needed confidence to reach my work goals.

Tell us about your work at CT Productions and how much impact you’ve made in your role.

I started as a marketing assistant, where I had to research into potential clients we wanted as part of our projects. I went to many conferences and ‘opened companies’ while ensuring the company’s brand was visible. Through that, I grew into a Communications role where I had to handle all internal and external relations with the different teams across Africa and our clients to ensure they get their needs met along with the agents we work with. As I grew in my Communications role, my network grew, which also allowed me to learn more about our company’s needs and how I could achieve that by leveraging the same needs of our clients. I applied this while training new staff on their roles.

What are the challenges you’ve had to surmount in your journey?

As someone just starting in this line of work, it was difficult getting my bearings within the media space. Also, I generally enjoy the back end and ensuring the projects are handled seamlessly. It was a real change for me to now be at the forefront of things with our clients while still making sure projects are executed efficiently.

How have your priorities changed from when you first started?

My priorities have changed from when I first started. I was in the process of finding my footing in the corporate world, and CT Productions has helped me come out of my shell and given me a direction in finding, honing, and improving my skillsets.

When I started with CTP, my focus was truly and strictly on just getting by and learning what I could to fit my role as a marketing assistant. With time and the change of roles and more responsibility, my focus turned from that to ensure that CTP becomes a trusted agency in ensuring our clients’ brand visibility is well handled. As I deal with pre and post sales including managing all our projects, my focal point as a team lead is to adequately give those I work with, most especially my trainees who may come in without prior knowledge of the industry, a good sense of our company culture and procedures while guiding them in handling parts of the projects on their own.

How do you develop branding or PR strategies for organisations?

First, we research who our target clients are, depending on the market and the project we are pushing. Then we investigate

their brand placement nationally and globally and see how our projects can leverage on their brand awareness. While each client may have specific concerns that must be addressed, and each will need different types of evidence to support your messages, our sales strategy is to address all their needs that come up. This is important in making their brand relevant to their desired target audience. Brand strength is driven by both reputation and visibility. Increasing visibility alone, without strengthening your reputation, is rarely successful. That’s why traditional “awareness-building” advertising or sponsorships often yield disappointing results. On the other hand, content marketing increases both visibility and reputation at the same time. It is also the perfect way to make your brand relevant to your target audience.

How do you deal with failure?

Failure is a part of life that most people do their best to avoid. I fail, and sometimes I fail woefully. No one is perfect. However, I look back on the things that led to the failure and see how I can improve on them. As they say, practice makes perfect. In my case, practice makes less mistakes for the future.

What’s unique about your company?

What I would say is unique about CT Productions is that we are a predominantly all-female company pushing our way through a male industry. As a female-led agency, we aim to stand out from the competition by giving a voice and starting point to females who want to start a career in communications, teaching them to be more detailed oriented. By giving a chance to people from different walks of life, we imprint in them the need to focus more and work harder, knowing how much more we work in a maledominated world. There is a need to prove ourselves constantly.’

Also, we all have a bond and sisterhood that helps us all work well together. I found a friend and sister in my boss, as well as all the other ladies that have been there from the start.

What advice would you give to someone trying to build a PR and marketing career?

I would tell them to step outside the box as much as possible. The world is constantly evolving, as are all the industries we work in. What worked for a company ten years ago may not work for them now, and as such, we need to step out of our comfort zone and pull on our creative instincts to give the best to our clients.

What, in your opinion, are the qualities a good entrepreneur must possess?

A good entrepreneur must be assertive yet flexible and be a good listener.

By Joseph Ekeng

Bola Atta: The Creative Genius Driving UBA’s Marketing

Bola Atta is a woman of many parts. She started her career as a banker and ventured into journalism, and now she is one of Nigeria’s top and widely celebrated marketing executives.

She has left no one in doubt about her vibrant spirit, creativity and leadership capacity everywhere she has worked, including her current position as Group Director, Marketing and Corporate Communications Department, United Bank for Africa and UBA Foundation.

Education and career

Atta graduated from the University of Sussex, where she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics in 1988.

In 1991, she secured an MBA, majoring in Marketing, at Duquesne University. Her first job out of school was as a banker. In an earlier interview, she revealed that her career choice was informed by her desire to follow the path of least resistance.

“So when I say that I thought I would work in Finance, this was not necessarily because I particularly had a passion for it, but because I was good in maths and later in economics, and I thought that was the way to go,” she said.

A few years into her banking career, Atta discovered she wanted more out of life. Banking became boring and was not giving her the space to express her creativity to the fullest. She switched to publishing.

As editor-in-chief of True Love West Africa Magazine, Atta began to find peace with her inner self. Journalism offered her the freedom and push to explore deeper into the world. She was able to connect with aspects of human existence that made her find true fulfilment.

She was at True Love between 2010 and 2014. She left to join Flair Productions, West Africa, where she served as CEO for about two years. After that, she became the Executive Producer of Africa’s Next Top Model, a reality television show and spin-off to America’s Next Top Model show which premiered in 2012.

Atta, a multi-talented woman like the golden fish with no hidden place, was later snapped up by media giant, M-NET. As the Programmes Manager at M-NET, she was charged with widening the scope of programming and injecting some creativity and vibrancy into the media platform.

And without a doubt, she delivered to the very last of her mandate. Many analysts have said that it was at M-NET that Atta discovered her rhythm as a media champion and left a mark that will resonate for many years. During her time, she drove for more channels promoting Nigerian and African movies. She worked on the concept, development and programming of this channel – ‘Africa Magic’, which was successfully launched in 2003 and is now one of the most-watched channels across the African continent.

Appointment as Head of Marketing, UBA

It was largely based on her job at M-NET that she secured her present assignment as Group Director and Head, Marketing & Corporate Communications at UBA Plc. She is also now the Executive Producer of REDTV, an online network that UBA supports. Her present role in UBA means she oversees the designing and mapping out of marketing and corporate communication strategies across eighteen countries.

Without a doubt, the banking industry is one of the most intense and physically challenging sectors, but Atta has so far survived with her glamour and glows still intact. She explains that her way of dealing with challenges is to intermittently pause and strategise, especially when at a crossroads.

‘‘No matter what one is confronted with at every point, there is always a way out of every situation.” She said, adding that the diversity and size of UBA has challenged her to grow even more.

Awards and recognitions

As a woman devoted to excellence, Atta has been the recipient of many awards and accolades, which underlines her personality as a goal-getter and innovator.

In 2008, in recognition of her talent and impact, Atta was listed among the 40 top Nigerians under 40. Then in 2015, she was nominated among the 100 most influential women in Nigeria. She was awarded the Best Marketing Professional in West Africa in 2017.

Atta was recently awarded the Outstanding Corporate Communications Personality of the Decade by the Marketing Edge Annual National Marketing Summit of Brands & Advertising Excellence Awards. The award cements her place as one of the top marketers in Nigeria’s highly competitive banking industry.

Upon receiving the Marketing Edge award, she noted that her goal has never been to win a prize, but she has always been challenged to serve and do her best as demanded by her job.

In her words, “I have always loved doing what I do, and my objective has never been for acclaim or recognition. It’s the milestones, the changing lives! Therein lies the fulfilment. However, it is nice sometimes to receive an award, especially from a highly reputable source. I’m grateful for the Outstanding Corporate Communications Personality of the Decade award. Thank you, Marketing Edge!”

She has also been recognised as one of the world’s most influential 100 creatives of African descent for 2021.

Indeed, her current role in UBA may suggest that Atta may have risen to the pinnacle of her career. Yet, her drive and hunger remain unabated as she longs to conquer new territory in her very eventful three-decade-old career.

By Ruth Okwumbu

How Chude Jideonwo Achieved Extraordinary Success Before 30

Listed by Forbes among the 30 under 30 best African entrepreneurs in 2013, Chude Jideonwo is no stranger to the news. If his several achievements in the media career do not make him popular enough, his interesting conversations on #WithChude and #ChudeExplains will get the job done. When he graduated as the best student in Land Law from the University of Lagos, the media entrepreneur would never have guessed how far he would stray from the Law career. Jideonwo’s story will keep you glued.

Ifechukwude Osanedum Jideonwo was born on the March 16, 1985 to Ifeanyi S. and Ngozi A. Jideonwo in Lagos,

Nigeria. He had his primary education in Lagos, at the K. Kotun Memorial Primary School, before attending Adebola Baptist High School and the Mayflower School, Ikenne, for his secondary education.

After this, he proceeded to the University of Lagos to study Law, and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2007. He observed the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) at Nigeria LNG Limited, Lagos, Nigeria. He would later obtain a master’s degree in Communication and Media Studies at the Pan-African University, Lagos. Jideonwo also attended the Strathmore Business School (SBS), Lagos Business School, and Said Business School at the University of Oxford.

An early career start

Even before graduating from the University, Chude had started showing his career interests. His novel, His Father’s Knickers, which he wrote when he was 13, was launched in 2001 in conjunction with the National Orientation Agency and the French Cultural Centre.

As a 15-year-old, he worked with the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and later with Minaj Broadcasting International (MBI) as a researcher with ‘Celebrating Jesus.’ This was where he was honing his interests and skills in information gathering. He’d later work as a production coordinator at Inside Out with Agatha, a popular TV show anchored by Agatha Amata between 2001 and 2002.

Jideonwo worked with Funmi Iyanda (Miyeti Productions), on the project New Dawn, a program which showed on NTA Network, for three years from 2002 to 2005. He also worked as the Assistant Publicist at Common Ground Productions between 2005-2006, then proceeded to The Apprentice Africa, where he was Lead, Website and Publicity.

He worked on several other productions as a writer, assistant director, and host, including, Rubbin’ Minds talk show on Channels Television, The Academy, Patito’s Gang, Video 10, Big Brother Nigeria in 2006, and Moments with Mo (MNet) in 2007, among others.

By the time he was done with his NYSC, Chude was qualified to work as the Assistant Media Relations Manager at Virgin Nigeria Airways in 2008. His various volunteering and moonlighting experiences had equipped him well.

Chude, the scribe

A man of many sides, Chude Jideonwo is also a seasoned writer. He joined the NEXT Newspaper (now defunct), a news, opinion, business and entertainment Newspaper as a copy editor in July 2009 and later became a member of the editorial board. He later took up a column on the Sunday edition of Guardian Nigeria Newspaper known as “Sons and Daughters,” focusing on profiling the children of the rich.

He has now written and edited several publications, including the very popular; Are We The Turning Point Generation? (a collection of essays launched in May 2014); How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump (launched in November 2017).

The Red Journey

Chude Jideonwo teamed up with Adebola Williams, a young man he met while working with Inside Out with Agatha. The duo co-founded Red Africa, a media-content, communication and development company. What started as a dream for two young

men in their early twenties has grown into an international brand, even consulting for big names like Google, Microsoft, the British Council and even the United State Government.

The Red Group has five subsidiaries which the duo also cofounded. The Future Projects (TFP), (the body in charge of the Future Award Africa, is a social enterprise committed to human and capital development, especially in Africa. The Red Media Africa handles the PR and marketing segment of Red Africa. The group also owns Ynaija, an online newspaper covering news, entertainment, politics, business, lifestyle, environment, culture, technology, comedy and healthy living for young Nigerians.

Y! Africa is a brand involved in the print magazine, television and radio show. StateCraft Inc. is a nation-building company that specialises in election, policy, citizen engagement, governance and many more.

After running Red Africa for 13 years, Chude left to start Joy, Inc. Joy Inc., a teaching and media company that equips people, communities, and nations with tools to solve problems and find joy. All of its profits are invested in selected charities. Joy Inc.’s products include #WithChude, The Joy Masterclass, The Joy Congress, Joy: The Podcast, The Joy Clubs, The Joy Store, and The Daily Vulnerable, among others.

Other service and Awards

Even in his teenage years, Jideonwo’s works had started gaining acclaim. He was the Winner of the British Council Telling Stories Competition in 2003 and bagged the Olive Excellence Award in Media and Production in 2004. He has earned several awards in the two decades since he actively started building a career.

Outside his rich career, Jideonwo has served in several other capacities, including the British Council Steering Group for its Creative industries expo, where he was appointed a Youth Champion by the Federal Ministry of Youth Development in 2012. He was also selected as a Nigerian Youth Leader by the United States Government under the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) – 2009. He was the youngest member of the awards committee for the Ford Foundation Jubilee Transparency Award in 2012.

He received the Nigeria Merit Award: Entertainment Writer of the Year in 2007 and The Inside Out Award for exemplary commitment in 2009. In March 2018, Jideonwo was selected alongside several other 17 other young leaders from all over Africa for the 2018 Tutu Leadership Programme.

By Ruth Okwumbu

Adebola Williams: How a Failed Entry Into Acting Turned into a Successful PR Career

Not many names are popular in the media, public relations and advertising space, particularly in Nigeria. But when someone combines multiple personalities as a journalist, media entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and political activist, earning a space at the top becomes an easy feat. Described as “the man with the golden touch” by Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, Adebola Williams has spent the last two decades etching a niche for himself in Nigeria’s media industry. His is an interesting story that starts from a failed attempt to get on the screens as an actor.

Adebola Williams was born on March 7, 1986, into a quite wealthy family in Lagos, Nigeria, although their lot would later change.

Recounting it, he’d say, “I was born into wealth, but before I was nine, everything was lost, and that is the most difficult situation. If you were born in a particular state, you would be used to it, but if you were born in a particular state and it reversed to the worst, it would be difficult to adjust. If I was born in a one-bedroom apartment, I already know the drill, but being born into wealth, adjusting wasn’t easy.”

He grew up in and outside Nigeria and attended the London School of Journalism and the Pan-African University. Adebola grew up reading many books, and throughout his early education, he had one goal – to become an actor. He jumped on every opportunity to take up roles, but fate seemed to have other plans for him. When he eventually landed a role in a soap opera, the film never saw the television screens. Adebola was discouraged, as the role only earned him 50cents.

Even though passion had a huge role in his choice, he knew that there would be bills to pay as he grew older. So, he went out to seek other opportunities that would either earn him good money or provide him with the requisite training and experience to earn better in the future. Adebola tried his hands on different things. After all, he was a young and patient teenager, fortunate to have all the time to fail his way up the ladder.

He worked as an assistant to a Counselling Psychologist. He also worked with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) for three years. Although he was only paid for one year of his work, the experience gave him some exposure and training in production for television.

He got a job with the economic watch as a producer, and this was what gave him much-needed exposure. From co-presenting two shows on NTA, he became a TV producer, working for Nigeria International, a syndicated TV show on three continents, and Living it on South Africa’s Mnet.

The Red startup

Williams co-founded Red Africa alongside Chude Jideonwo. Red Media Africa is the public relations (PR) agency & Empowerment Marketing division under the parent company, RED. The company has six major practice areas: Corporate Practice, Technology Practice, SME Practice, Governance Practice, Faith Practice and the International Practice – and has successfully executed for brands across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, including Facebook, Uber, Union Bank and Heineken.

Red Media Africa has received multiple awards like the Gold SABRE Awards for Public relations Campaigns and the Young Lions Public relations competition for the next generation of creatives.

The other companies in the Red Group include; StateCraft Inc, the communication agency that helped power Ghana’s threetime presidential aspirant to a victory; Generation Y!, a TV and online content company with one of Nigeria’s most popular online newspapers and The Future Project, a social enterprise that hosts Africa’s biggest youth social change event, The Future Awards Africa.

Adebola Williams is CEO of the group. Williams has served on different boards, including the World Economic Forum, where he served as a Young Global Leader, Global Patron of Malaria No More, Chairman of AW Network, and Non-Executive Director on Zedcrest. He also served as a Faculty Lecturer at the School of Politics Policy and Governance.

He also co-founded EnoughisEnough (EiE), a Nigerian civic participation platform and a voice for young people in politics. He resigned as the board Chairman to steer the rebranding of the current Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, optimising media engagement to change longstanding perceptions and sway the elections.

Awards

Adebola Williams and his co-founder Chude Jideonwo were cowinners of the Young Business Leader of the Year, West Africa, CNBC Africa All Africa Business Leaders Awards 2014. He also clinched the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Young African Leaders Initiative, and a fellowship to study in the United States for six weeks.

In 2017, Adebola Williams was named the African Young Achiever by EMY, Ghana. He was also listed among the 100 Most Influential People of African Descent under the United Nations international decade for people of African descent. In 2018, he bagged the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellowship in South Africa.

Did You Kn w?

By Simeon Onoja

By Ruth Okwumbu

How Mobolaji Okusaga Became a Marketing Communication Guru

Some six to seven years back, the marketing communications space in Nigeria was in flux; businesses were experiencing a lot of uncertainty and seeking newer solutions to address their communication challenges and help define their route in the rapidly-changing industry.

At this time, a young man set up an agency that would offer the precise solution businesses were seeking at the time.

That young man was Mobolaji Okusaga, and the agency – Precise – was out to provide clients with forwardlooking solutions to their strategic communications, reputation, design and management challenges.

Bolaji Okusaga is a strategy and brand enthusiast with wide experience in the Mass-Media, Marketing, Public Relations, and Banking, but he was not born with all of these feathers in his cap. He acquired them over the course of his career.

Career background

After his University education, Okusaga had a short stint in Arts Management & Consultancy at the International Centre for the Arts under the tutelage of Ambassador Segun Olusola. A short while after, he left for the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) at the Marketing Unit of the Broad Street branch of the then Lion Bank of Nigeria.

Bolaji Okusaga started getting media experience when he worked with Minaj Broadcast International for a year as a Producer/ Researcher across several programmes, including; “Arts ‘N’ People”, a 30 minutes weekly documentary on arts; and “Life ‘N’ Style”, a magazine programme. This was only the start for him, as Okusaga had his eyes on bigger fish.

He joined Presentation Plus, a branding and reputation managers firm, where he handled the Media strategy of several clients (notable among them is the Obasanjo/Atiku 2003 Presidential Campaign).

When the opportunity came, he went to join Marina International Bank and was part of the team responsible for driving the brand proposition behind the business strategy. At the advent of the banking industry consolidation, he pioneered the brand’s visual manifestation change, working with consultants on culture and business process re-engineering.

He was part of the nine-man integration project management team that drove the merger and headed the communication silo of the Access Bank Merger Group. He also set up the Investor Relations Unit of Access Bank upon completing the merger of Access Bank, Capital Bank and Marina International Bank in 2005. He was appointed Head of Investor Relations of the new Access Bank in the same year.

Bolaji Okusaga joined NECCI Consulting in 2006 as Consultant, and spent a year there as well, handling In-Plant and Out-Bound Public Relations, Customer Service and Brand Management Training Programmes for Individuals and Corporate Organisations, and overseeing CRM Implementation, Process Improvement and Brand Strategy Development for Corporate clients. Stakeholder Engagement and Investor Relations Programme Development were also part of the responsibilities he took on.

With the diverse and rich experience across different sectors, Okusaga was amply qualified and equipped for his next assignment. He joined Quadrant in April 2007 as Lead Consultant and later rose to the position of MD/CEO after three years. As QuadrantMSL GROUP CEO for almost seven years, Okusaga was responsible for the day-to-day running and management, defining corporate strategy, and developing and directing the implementation of the business strategy and plans with the board’s approval. He also managed relationships with multi-national clients like Philip Morris, British Airways, Microsoft Mobile, Coca-Cola, Etisalat Nigeria, Standard Chartered Nigeria, GSK Nigeria, Google, SAP, Intel, CNN and others in the agency’s portfolio.

While at The Quadrant Company, the company won the Award of the African PR Consultancy of the year, the most prestigious international award in Public Relations by the Holmes Report / Sabre Awards.

Founding Precise

Bolaji Okusaga launched Precise (Reputation Design) in 2018, as a strategic communications and reputation management company, with a mission to redefine and deliver human-centric and platform-aligned stories for brands seeking to enter the marketplace. From the outset, Precise was poised to meet clients’ needs in the Integrated Marketing Communications industry.

While announcing the launch at the Lagos PR Industry Gala & Awards at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, in 2017, he said;

“We are setting up this company because we understand the business environment and the fact that there are certain needs and nuances. We have been deliberate about crafting the vision, we have been deliberate about crafting the delivery solutions and the lines of service that will come with it; we have also been deliberate about evolving a unique revenue model that gets us compensated so that we can do this work on an ongoing basis that keeps the business sustainable even though it will continue to chase after disruptive tendencies within the market space.”

Educational Background & others

Bolaji Okusaga graduated from the Obafemi Awolowo University, where he bagged a B.A. in Dramatic Arts in 1995. He obtained his Master of Arts degree in Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan shortly after his (NYSC).

Okusaga has equally attended The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He is an authority in what he does and has delivered several papers and lectures on trends in Public Relations and Digital PR. Okusaga also blogs occasionally on Strategy, Public Affairs, and Corporate Governance. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the United Kingdom Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

Okusaga was also the second Vice President of the Association of Corporate Affairs Managers of Banks (ACAMB). He served as a panelist on the Marketing Edge 2020 Summit & Awards Panel.

Profile

By Kenechukwu Muoghalu

Bola Balogun is a Pioneer in Nigeria’s Lifestyle and Beauty PR

prominent personalities that needed their services. With that much enthusiasm, she also worked as an intern for the popular Honey Magazine.

It was during the phase of her styling career that she got married to her husband, Ishmeal Balogun, and moved back to Nigeria with him in 2005. On arrival, she became the first fashion editor for Genevieve Magazine, which was a popular Nigerian women’s magazine at that time.

content on fashion, beauty and lifestyle for television, web and mobile devices. This fashion and lifestyle television production has also handled top shows that aired on MNet. Since its inception, the company has managed high-profile endeavours including Glam Report TV and the Fashion Protege for MultiChoice in collaboration with BellaNaija and Miss Nigeria Reality shows.

In 2012, Bola Balogun also founded her second company known as Glam Brand Agency, which provides brand strategy and Public Relations solutions and also works to assist brand entrance into the Nigerian market. It focuses on high-end and specialised labels in the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle sectors. She handled some of the most prestigious accounts such as Agbani Darego, Pz Cusson, Imperial leather, Sealy Mattresses and Polo Avenue boutique among others.

Bola Balogun’s businesses Glam Brand Agency and Glam Networks were spurred by her interest in the lifestyle and beauty industry. Just right after she concluded her elementary and college education in America, where she spent most of her childhood days, Balogun enrolled in the American University in Washington, DC, in 1996, where she majored in Psychology.

In the year 2000, she completed her Bachelor’s degree and pursued her interest in fashion. She then attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, New York, USA to study fashion styling and image consulting.

The Journey into the Career World

Having educated herself sufficiently, Balogun entered the fashion industry as a stylist in the city of New York. At first, she worked with Jill Topol and got the opportunity to partner with multiple celebrities including N’sync, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears, Pharrell Williams, Lil Wayne and a host of other

Balogun partnered with her friend, Omoyemi Akerele, and co-founded Nigeria’s pioneer fashion styling agency. Although she recalled an obstacle they faced saying, “We had to do a lot of convincing, since people didn’t really understand the job in Nigeria at the time. We eventually convinced magazines that they needed a stylist to work on their fashion pages, which gave us a good platform to work with other people”.

Despite Balogun’s success at the time, she recognised the need to make certain structural shifts in the sector. In her words, she said, “I felt like so much was happening within the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industry that the world needed to see and hear about so I decided to start telling the stories of Nigerian creatives and products”. With her expertise and training within the industry, she birthed her firms.

Origination of the Two Glam’s

In 2009, Balogun founded Glam Networks which is a Television production company focused on creating and developing original

She is responsible for introducing such brands as Maybelline, Dark & Lovely, and Caroline Herrera to the Nigerian market. Balogun has executed projects in line with her services for popular brands like, Herrera Confidential signature fragrances, Hairfinity products, Maybelline New York, Yves Saint Laurent, Emmaus Beauty, and Lancôme Paris: My Shade My Power Campaign among others.

In light of the current beauty PR needs, Glam Brand Agency is undoubtedly the leading firm in Nigeria, as they are responsible for the PR and strategy of all the big beauty brands entering Nigeria and parts of Ghana. These achievements however does not deter the mother of five from taking strategic steps that will propel her business to the next level.

Awards and Recognition

Bola Balogun has been honoured with a number of prestigious business accolades, including the title of Beauty and Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2007 Future Awards. She also took home a prize at the 2014 WIE Next Generation Leaders Awards.

Meet Tolulope Olorundero, an exceptional PR Professional and Communications Advisor

Losing her father at an early age and growing up as the third of four girls to a widowed mother, Tolulope Olorundero, popularly referred to as ToluComms held on to her dreams. This passion was sparked at the age of 5, when she found her love for reading novels and ended up being the top student whenever an essay competition was being held. In her words, “By primary 5, I had read all the Enid Blyton books as well as his collection of Reader’s Digest.”

She then advanced to writing and editing while in high school. From high school, she studied Secretarial Administration at the Polytechnic of Ibadan. With the OND degree aside, she sought more knowledge and thus opted for a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature at Olabisi Onabanjo University in 2005. During her time there, she found herself practising some public relations functions without her knowledge.

Olorundero’s interest in reading and editing was still very much alive. She would spend time editing materials for her coursemates who needed her services. She was also made the head of publicity for her local church, and from these little activities, she thought about having a side hustle around that same niche. In 2016, she formulated what was known as Mosron Communications, which originally started as an editorial company that focused on rendering its editorial services to students and churches.

The Backstory Behind Mosron Communications

When asked about the story behind Mosron Communications, Olorundero will squarely refer back to her father, and in her words, she would say, “My father was a journalist and he usually comes home with newspapers, so the first thing I would do is to pick up the newspaper and check out some errors.” It was just not working well for me that all I can see were errors. So that was what conditioned me to know what to look out for when something is not written well in a book.”

With this strong background, she nurtured her new invention and handled each phase throughout her stay in school, and from there, she was clear about choosing public relations as a career. She went ahead to acquire qualifications from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR). From there, she went to the school of media and communication, where she gained a certificate in advanced writing and reporting skills.

By 2012, she had her master’s degree in public and international affairs at the University of Lagos. All these qualifications got her ready for a fresh start, and in January 2019, Mosron Communications was launched as a full-fledged public relations company. The PR guru also has plans to expand her services to accommodate a wider range of people outside Nigeria to other sub-Saharan African countries. She also talks extensively through her numerous articles, which focus on business.

She has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in her profession, which has allowed her to make significant contributions to the business through her inventions. In addition to that, she is the Chairperson of the Association of Nigerian Women in Public, and despite the fact that she has a successful profession, she still finds time to provide training for young people who aspire to have a career like hers.

Awards and Recognitions

She has been honoured with numerous accolades for the work she has done for her clients and for society as a whole, including the PR Powerlist of 2022, the top 100 global PR influencers of 2021, the YNaija Powerlist of 2020 and Emerging Female Public Relations Professional by WIMCA in 2020, among others.

Currently, Tolulope Olorundero has grown to be a versatile B2B public relations and strategic communications consultant for multinational organisations and global executives with exemplary skills in crisis management, strategy development, and digital communications. She still encourages public relator aspirants while upholding the importance of her career, saying, “Communication is life and so there is an urgent reason that everyone should learn how to do it effectively.”

15

Impactful Branding Trends in 2022

Article || By Joseph Ekeng

For any business that desires growth and authentic connection with consumers, branding is an essential concept they must understand and embrace. But there is a lot to branding aside from brand names and logos. Great customer experience, reliability, and engaging employees are all part of the package.

However, branding is not supposed to be static. The difference between businesses that stay vibrant and those that don’t is how they adjust to the changing demands of the market or market trends. From time to time, businesses need to assess their branding strategy and align it with the changing needs of consumers.

Hence, smart brands are constantly watching out for emerging branding trends which they inculcate into their branding strategies, allowing them to stay connected to the consumers. So what are the most impactful branding trends in 2022?

Virtual events

With the outbreak of Covid-19 and then the lockdown, brands had to find an innovative way to engage customers through virtual events and social media. Initially, it looked like a setback, but it unlocked a golden opportunity for customer engagement and global expansion. Post-Covid. Virtual events have come to stay and growing fast because they offer brands a chance to reach

new markets without worrying about long travels and building physical infrastructure. This has been game-changing for brands to showcase products and services and brand experience.

The 60s and Y2k

In this post-Covid era, there is a sense of nostalgia among customers, many of whom are longing for the pre-covid feeling. This feeling is finding expression in the branding arena as it has created an opportunity for brands to gain a meaningful connection with consumers by appealing to this trend through online branding.

Adaptable Logo

The expansion of online commerce has created new global opportunities for business owners. This requires them to promote their brands across various channels like websites and blogs and have a strong presence on social media. With different screens and new advertising methods, the “one size fits all” logo is no longer desirable, hence the need for an adaptive logo. For example, the Premier League logo take different shapes and background, depending on the environment.

Social media branding

The social media network is unarguably one of the biggest platforms for brands to build an organic connection with consumers. With

billions of users daily surfing social media for content, there is no better place for brand building than social media networks. Businesses use social media for various reasons: advertising, engagement, market research and insight and targeted digital marketing campaigns.

Official hashtags

According to a published report, using hashtags in a post can increase reach by up to 11%. Many businesses use hashtags that contain their brand names or product to boost the effectiveness of their campaigns; this allows them to monitor consumer sentiments and perception as well as enhances brand recognition.

Eco-friendly brands

In recent years, consumers have been paying closer attention to climate change and are more willing to support companies whose products are eco-friendly. In a recent survey, consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from companies committed to positive social change and environmental impact. Brands like Ford, Coca Cola are latching on to this trend to build a lasting connection with consumers.

Interactive Branding

This is a concept that has come to stay because consumers are not content with merely reading blog posts or watching commercials. They want a more experiential engagement with the brands and influence the product development process as much as possible. One of the ways by which businesses do this is to tell captivating stories about their companies, products, and services. Some interactive content brands have deployed quizzes, surveys, personalised messages, videos etc.

Data-backed branding

As people interact daily with social media and other online platforms, they leave behind relevant digital footprints that give vital insights into consumer behaviours and consumption patterns. Brands are taking advantage of analytics and business intelligence tools that use the information provided to make data-backed decisions on

product development and other marketing activities. Such details are used to refine operational efficiencies, improve customer experience and boost brand recognition.

Memes

Memes started as a way of online communication by social media users. Over time, this internet culture has become very popular and mainstream, allowing some businesses to take advantage of it to drive vitality and brand recognition.

Brands also leverage it to appeal to a new customer base and gain wider acceptance.

Bold and muted colour schemes

It is now common for companies to adopt bold and muted colours as part of their brand identities. One notable company that embraces this colour scheme is Meta (formerly Facebook).

Branding experts believe that soft colours can excite and get customers’ attention faster with the right colour combinations.

Branding without brand names

Since 2020 there has been a more than 3% increase in the usage of ad blockers. This clearly shows that consumers are sick and tired of ads being shoved at them every minute on various channels.

As a solution, brands are finding new ways to market their products and services without using their brand names or logos. They focus on their unique value proposition to drive growth instead of highlighting brand identities. As soon as they have secured the attention of the consumers, they then strategically bring up their brands without upsetting the consumer.

Inclusivity and diversity

The issues of inclusivity and diversity have now become a major business focus. Companies have become more deliberate about the inclusivity and diversity subject as they seek more intimacy with their target market. Indeed, consumers have said that these factors critically affect their buying decisions. For example, 64% of consumers

said they took some action after seeing an ad that encouraged diversity and inclusivity.

Emblem

There is a clear difference between logos and emblems. Unlike the former, emblems give more room for companies to experiment and be more creative. Emblems tell more about a company because it is more symbolic and memorable and express the core ideas behind the business. Emblems are becoming a more popular form of branding because of the room it provides for deeper and more memorable engagement.

Brands warming up to metaverse

With the metaverse opening up new opportunities for social commerce, brands are paying keener attention to the application and imagining how they can leverage it for a deeper connection with consumers.

Metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual world where people can interact, socialise, collaborate and shop. It is widely believed to be the next stage of the internet, and brands are already exploring opportunities to connect with customers on the digital platform.

Earlier in 2022, MTN acquired plots of land on the metaverse, while Nike has launched what it called the virtual sneakers that will be up for purchase exclusively on the metaverse.

As the metaverse continues on its growth trajectory, experts believe that there are opportunities therein for businesses of all backgrounds, but only those brave enough to tap in will be rewarded.

Hand drawn branding

In a dispensation where brands are more obsessed with being authentic, hand-drawn branding is becoming more popular. Aside from being eye-catchy, they can make brands stand out and become more popular. This branding approach has become very common with businesses in the creative segment. Companies that sell beauty products and services or sell kids’ clothes or confectionaries also embrace these design patterns.

Tola Bademosi: A Master in Communication Marketing

Tola Bademosi set out on his career path at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He earned a degree in Educational Management and Economics. And went on to acquire a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing Management at Lagos State University, Nigeria.Bademosi also attended the Lagos business School after his MBA. He was getting himself prepared for the corporate and business world.

The Start of Bademosi’s Career

Firstly, he got a role to work with Equity Life Insurance Company, and after a period of time, he left to work with Insight Grey. Soon, he came into contact with the Quadrant Company and also got a role with the firm. While Bademosi still had his contract with the firm, he decided to take another leap that might help him scale as a public relations practitioner. In his words, Bademosi lamented saying

“Years ago I observed how PR people were treated compared to their advertising counterparts, and I noticed a wide gulf. I said to myself that something is definitely wrong here. I needed to understand what advertising was all about so, I resigned from The Quadrant Company”. After he left the company, by 2004, he got into LTC/JWT Advertising as a Group Head and Strategy and then settled to learn all the basics of advertising, to get him equipped for the future.

“I spent about two and a half years working from an advertising perspective across various brands. Armed with my deep knowledge of advertising and the practical knowledge of PR, I thought we could offer something different, something that goes beyond the trigonometric of the minds but tugs at the heartstrings of specified target audiences”, he said during an interview. In an attempt to invent something different, he went ahead to set up an agency that would provide

strategic communication, public relations, and events management solutions to a spectrum of organisations, Adetola Samuel Bademosi founded a top PR consulting firm known as BD Consult (BDC).

The Growth of an Empire

Tola Bademosi and Dotun Ajiboye were the initial founders of BD Consult in 2006. However, in the long run, Dotun Ajiboye quit the company, and Bademosi assumed complete custody of it. From working with just a single client in 2006, the firm has grown substantially mostly through referrals based on the level of professional work it has executed for its satisfied clientele.

Since its inception, his public relations company has been the subject of much discussion, and as a result, he has gained a wide range of clients, including Lafarge, The La Casera Company, Indomie Instant Noodles, Power Gas, PZ, Cadbury, UAC, Ceader Micro-Finance, Reckitt Benckiser, Atlantic Shrimpers, and Nobel Carpets, among others. Bademosi still upholds that the success of his company was as a result of his adherence to the values of integrity, professionalism, and relationship building, in addition to other anecdotes that contributed to his success.

His quest for more knowledge still did not end at that point, he still went ahead to earn a professional certificate in Strategy Development, Analysis and Change Management from the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business in South Africa, studied at the London School of Public Relations and became a PR member of America. Due to

Tola Bademosi’s presence in the market, he has amassed a wealth of knowledge on how to design PR and marketing communication projects that will boost income and brand awareness in ways that are far above the expectations of any business.

Awards and Recognition

In recognition of his numerous contributions to the industry, Tola Bademosi was named PR Personality of the Year (PR Category) at the 2015 Nigeria Brand Award. In 2016, his company, BD Consult, was named the Best PR & Communication Company in Nigeria at the African Corporate Excellence Award presented by Corporate Vision Magazine, a UK-based publication.

Even with his vast knowledge and countless achievements in the industry, learning still remains a critical part of Bademosi’s life. “I am adventurous and always willing and ready to try new things. I love and relish challenges, and enjoy ‘taking the bull by the horn’ with a strong determination to succeed”, he acclaimed.

Meet Godfrey Adejumoh, a Seasoned Nigerian Public Relations Practitioner

“One day in service, a friend asked me, ‘Godfrey, where would you like to work?’ I replied with a not-too-clear answer that its summary was that I wanted anything that had to do with image making. He replied with excitement, ‘Ah, I have a friend who runs a Public Relations Consultancy in Lagos.’ Desperate me, it was in my self-enlightened interest, so I started reading about PR,” Adejumoh narrated in one of his publications on LinkedIn.

The Stepping Stones of the PR

Growing up, Godfrey Adejumoh was a detailed-oriented kid. In his words, “I was 22 then. So I wrote: at 23, I will be a graduate. At 24, I will go for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), and at 25, I will start work. I proceeded to add that at 28, I would be married. At 29, we would have our first child. “ And just like it was stated, he passed each milestone as and when due.

Just after he gained his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Benin, Nigeria in 2005, he then proceeded to serve in Sepeteri village, Saki East, Oyo State, as a National Youth Service Corps Member. Adejumoh was posted as a school teacher where he strived to make the experience pleasurable. But during the course of his service, problems arose due to the program’s outdated location.

Some corps members went to more comfortable locales, but Adejumoh insisted on keeping his duty as a school teacher, as if he knew his future career would develop in the deserted area. As days turned into weeks, a friend offered him the exposure he sought.

It was from this course that Godfrey Adejumoh kicked off his career. In October 2007, he started his PR sojourn when he was given the role of client service executive at PR Distinction. From there, he processed his first press release, received multiple trainings, and networked with multiple PR agencies.

In December 2008, he moved to work with Marketing Mix & Company as their senior client service executive. Adejumoh gained extra knowledge and, yet again, he moved to another city by July 2010. While at the new company known as SilverBullet Public Relations & Event Management, he worked as a senior account executive, and in less than a year, he was made the acting head.

In May 2012, he joined Chain Reactions Nigeria and held the role of assistant communication specialist. It was during this course that he received a call for an opening in MTN as a PR and protocol assistant. By May 2013, he got the job and started fully as an employee. In October 2014, he applied for and got a higher role as an external communication officer, and with this role, he made some notable changes in the ideation and strategic deployment of the brand’s marketing communication and MTN foundations’ impact-based campaigns.

In 2016, he went for his Masters’s degree in Public and International Affairs from the University of Lagos.

By September 2017, he left MTN and signed up to work with Unilever. With this vast knowledge, he was made the corporate communications manager at Unilever Nigeria and hence works tirelessly to provide the company with improved narratives to help it achieve its goals of fostering long-term growth and improving life in Africa via its brands and operations in the country.

Over the course of more than a decade, he has successfully built a reputation as a popular public speaker and has also demonstrated his mastery of public relations by unveiling his services to high-profile multinational companies such as MTN, Unilever, Dupont, Reckitt Benckiser, LG Electronics, Accenture, Vertergaard Frandsen and DHL.

The one factor that sets Godfrey Adejumoh apart from his contemporaries is his ability to be well-versed in other spheres beyond the purview of public relations, such as external affairs, sustainable business, and corporate communications.

Achievements

Adejumoh is widely known for his thought leadership articles that promote knowledge sharing and discourse in the PR industry. Popular works include How does a PR pro make money? A Tale of Two PR Practitioners, Driving Effective Stakeholder Management in Public Relations, Government Spokespeople: The Battle Between Journalism and PR Practice, etc.

Aside from Godfrey Adejumoh being a PR expert, he is also passionate about mentoring, inspiring, and training aspiring like-minds, and one factor that he can’t get a hang over is his undiluted love for newspapers and thus produces some publications from time to time.

Profile || By Muoghalu Kenechukwu

The Evolution of Digital PR In Africa

By Wale Ameen

Public relations has indeed come a long way since its creation in the 20th century. The art, as we know it, has evolved with time and changed in dynamics with each passing phase of the world.

Since public relations essentially derived its essence from the medium through which it is disseminated, which in this case, before now, was through the traditional media, it has seen a change in nomenclature as public relations as we know it has gradually paved the way for digital PR.

This is premised on the birth and development of the world of digital media. To understand this evolution in its most simplistic form, we must first understand what digital media means or what digital media entails.

What is Digital media?

Digital media is made up of all digital forms through which media related content are now disseminated. Digital media consists of videos, articles, advertisements, audiobooks, virtual reality, digital art, and music that is delivered via web based systems and apps, or other forms of internet enabled means.

And so, with digital media, public relations has been amplified and moved to the next level. The power and influence of digital media and then digital PR can only be appreciated when we consider and put into perspective the sheer impact of social media and other outlets that make up digital media.

A look at the numbers…

According to Statista, revenue in Africa’s digital media market is projected to hit $5.33bn in 2022 and the largest segment is video games with a projected market volume of $2.62bn.

This figure is a direct result of the embrace of social media on the continent and the role it plays in key aspects of the everyday lives of Africans such as digital shopping and the likes.

As against traditional media, a huge chunk of individuals now make their purchasing decisions from content seen online. According to a Mckensey report, the discovery of new shopping options has been recently led by three main channels which are online ads (33%), recommendations from family and friends (23%), and seeing someone talk about it on social media (18%).

According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Yearly Digital Report, Nigerians, Ghanaians, and Kenyans spend on average about three and a half hours on social media per day, compared to two and a half hours on average globally. In the past year, in Nigeria alone, 6 million people joined social media networks for the first time in 2020.

This establishes the fact that digital media is the next frontier and everyone is racing to be strategically positioned to earn from this.

Indeed, even traditional media outfits are not left behind as they are fast switching to digital media, while digital only media outfits are also firmly taking root in their industries.

The coming of digital PR

As earlier explained, digital PR is now PR as we know it. Better put, it’s PR 2.0. And with its coming, it has opened up so many boundless opportunities with which just about anyone can effectively utilise to take their brand to the next level. It’s what I call the democratisation of the public relations and media world.

Just about anyone can target and reach a

larger audience for a fraction of what it would have initially cost to use traditional media like radio and TV. Technological advancement has resulted in considerable attrition of the customer-base of traditional marketing agencies and departments.

With digital PR, brands are better positioned to target the new market and connect with online audiences within a faster turnaround time.

It goes without saying that as the internet has caused massive shifts across all forms of traditional media, including print, radio, and television, it has also caused a shift in

digital PR services and how practitioners approach the practice of public relations.

Brands must therefore continuously seek to tap into the various components that make up the wholesome practice of digital public relations, such as influencer marketing, user generated contents, and the like, to increase brand appeal and acceptance among users.

It is important to note that traditional and digital PR share the same goal, which is basically the aim of presenting their client in the most favourable light. As much as the tools of the trade may have evolved, and are likely to keep evolving for the foreseeable

future since the world is an everly transient space, the core essence of the trade will remain sacrosanct. And that is the desire of every brand to remain and be seen in a positive light by the public.

What has changed, the speed and ease at which the art of public relations can be conducted and managed. And this is what every brand must tap into to remain profitable and at the top of their game.

Digital public relations, or Public Relations 2.0 as I refer to it, is one that has birthed huge possibilities for everyone in the market space.

How Zenith Bank Leveraged Branding To Become An International Giant

Article || By Wale Ameen

Big, bold, and daring. These words aptly describe Zenith Bank, a strong and towering brand within Nigeria’s banking system.

Zenith Bank was founded by a visionary and consummate banker, Jim Ovia, at a time when private ownership of a bank in Nigeria was pretty much an unpopular idea and in the thick of military rule. But these limitations proved not enough to deter a young and ambitious Ovia who was brimming with ideas on how banking should be done.

Milestones and advancements

Since its launch in 1990, the bank has grown to become one of the most respected brands within Nigeria’s banking industry, scoring a number of firsts in strategic banking indices. For example, it was the very first bank to pioneer the use of ICT in banking processes at a time when manual data entry and storage were still the order of the day.

It is currently Nigeria’s biggest bank by tier-1 capital and is a leading brand in corporate, investment, and retail banking, commercial and consumer banking; as well as personal and private banking. It currently has over 500 branches and offices across the 36 states of Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), located in prime commercial centres.

It also has subsidiaries in Ghana, known as Zenith Bank; Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. The bank also has a representative office in The People’s Republic of China. It was licenced in March 2007 by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of the United Kingdom and thus birthed Zenith Bank (UK) Limited as its United Kingdom subsidiary.

Its books have also been no less inspiring. Its half-year financial result for 2021 showed a profit before tax growth of 3%, with an increase from N114 billion earlier reported in the half year of 2021 to N117 billion. It also recorded a 9% growth in non-interest income from N116 billion in June 2020 to N127 billion in June 2021. In the retail sector, it also declared positive results as its retail deposits grew by N38.2 billion to N1.76 trillion year-to-date.

A Brand Built On Innovation

One thing that stands the brand out from other banks is the deliberateness it brings into its branding and business operations. Any discerning individual will see this in the overall approach of the bank.

Right from the onset, the bank has had a focus to stand out and be distinct; from its business focus, to the citing of its branches, and how it wants its staff members to be dressed down to how these staff members address each and every customer that comes through its doors .

This much was espoused by Jim Ovia, in his book ‘Africa Rise and Shine: How a Nigerian Entrepreneur from Humble Beginnings Grew a Business to $16 Billion.’

The results are very glaring for all to see. Starting out with $4 million in shareholders’ funds, the bank has grown to become one of Africa’s largest banks and an internationally recognised institution with more than $16 billion in assets.

Zenith Bank has been able to stay consistent with its brand values and has continuously and consistently worked on how it wants to be perceived and viewed by the outside world and its customers in particular. For example, Zenith bank does not shy from letting anyone know that it is a unique bank with a unique type of individuals as its customers. While it appeals to both the young and old, students and corporate executives, it nevertheless ensures that it is well defined.

Another area where it makes a distinct and bold statement in its branding and perception of its brand is in the location of its branches. Zenith Bank has maintained a consistency in the location of its branches, which it ensures are in upscale neighbourhoods and high-profile city centres and districts.

It complements a strong iconic brand visualisation with an equally commanding presence across all of its locations.

For Zenith Bank, innovation, superior customer service, and premium service are at the core of its operations, and this, the bank ensures, can be seen right from the top to the lowest of its employees in all of its branches.

Branding Strategies

One of the most important factors that has also enabled its strong brand equity is its ability to stay strategically focused on its vision. From inception, the bank clearly set out to distinguish itself in the banking industry through superior service quality, unique customer experience, and sound financial indices. Today, it is easily associated with first-in-class customer experience and satisfaction, innovation, good financial performance, a stable and dedicated management team, and the deployment of highly skilled personnel.

It has continually improved its capacity to meet customers’ increasing and dynamic banking needs as well as sustain highquality growth in challenging business environments. This it does through continuous investment in its branch network to bring quality banking services to its existing and potential customers.

It also continuously invests in the deployment of up-to-date and state-of-the-art ICT infrastructure; continuous investment in training and re-training of its human resources; and maintaining and reinforcing its core customer service delivery charter.

Still going strong…

This deliberateness in standing out has worked pretty well for the brand in its 23 years of existence as it has built a brand that is seen as reputable, international, and frontline. Indeed, it is the market leader in every sector it operates in.

When Zenith Bank is mentioned anywhere, what easily comes to the mind of anyone is class. That, right there, is what you get when you are deliberate and consistently deliver on what you stand for.

So far, Zenith Bank has successfully edged itself to the top with its consistency, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to lose momentum anytime soon.

Efosa Aiyevbomwan: An Emerging Star in Africa’s PR Landscape

In the last decade, Nigeria has had a gradual demographic shift in the media and Public Relations landscape. The big names who dominated the industry and have made their marks over the decades are systematically being replaced by a new set of game changers.

One of the new crops of leaders emerging in the industry is Efosa Aiyevbomwan. Efosa’s present job as Netflix’s Public Relations and Publicity Manager for sub-Saharan Africa is a culmination of years of hard work, dedication and innovative leadership.

Education

Arguably one of the most experienced PR experts in Nigeria, Efosa is a 2006 graduate of the University of

Lagos. While he was a student at Unilag, where he studied English, his vision of building a successful career in PR began to take shape.

He also holds a Master’s Degree in Media and Communication from Pan-African University. According to Efosa, his education at Pan-African University profoundly impacted his career trajectory and accelerated his rise into leadership positions.

In an interview with the University’s internal publication, he said, “The returns on my investment have been phenomenal, and I have spent the better part of the past decade applying everything I learnt during my MSc education – theoretical and otherwise – to my professional pursuits.

Joseph Ekeng

“Armed with my MSc degree, I have traversed the integrated marketing communications field, starting in public affairs before moving on to public relations. I am now working as Netflix PR Manager for SSA.

“It is important to note that the foundations upon which I have built my career have not been purely academic – SMC taught me grit, tenacity, perseverance and research skills. The critical thinking and public speaking exercises practised at SMC, for example, come into play every day at my present job as they also did in my previous roles,” he said.

Efosa is also a member of the Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN), an umbrella body for all PR consultants practising in Nigeria.

Career

Efosa is one of the most sought-after professionals in the PR Landscape, and this is evident by how fast he has risen in just about 15 years since he took his first communications job. He has traversed some of the top multinationals in Nigeria and beyond.

Fresh out of the University, he got his first job at Hues and Horizons Events Management.

Hues and Horizons allowed him to learn the ropes in PR. Those early steps built his confidence and encouraged him to launch deeper. Soon after, he stepped up his career and joined Nigerian Bottling Company as a Post-graduate Intern in the Public Affairs and Communications Department.

Thereafter, he veered off to the agency side of the industry by joining Sesema Public Relations. Sesesma allowed him to spread his wings. He worked closely with a wide spectrum of clients, helping to build and execute their brand strategies. He rose to the position of Account Manager before the urge to switch back to the client’s side took the better of him.

In 2014, he finally quit Sesema and joined Multi-Choice’s M-NET West Africa. M-NET was a whole new experience for him in terms of brand building and constructive media engagement, but Efosa lived up to expectations. The reward was a rapid promotion to the position of Public Relations Manager for DSTV Nigeria, putting him directly in charge of interfacing with the local and international media on behalf of his company.

Since leaving DSTV, Efosa has been responsible for the PR and media strategies for other leading organisations, including Universal Music Group, where he led their Public Relations and Communications drive in Nigeria and other Anglophone West African countries.

In 2019, he received an offer from Uber as Head of Communications in West Africa. In this capacity, he was in charge of building and

executing Uber’s communication strategy in West Africa. From there, he joined Appzone as chief marketing officer. That was his first marketing role.

It was while at Appzone that he got the offer to be part of Netflix’s leadership team in sub-Saharan Africa. Unlike his previous offer, the Netflix offer was the most enticing. Aside from the mind-blowing perks that came with the job, he had to work from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he works with a multicultural workforce worldwide.

Experience

Over the years, Efosa has garnered extensive experience in initiating and executing campaigns for multinational brands across different sectors, including broadcasting/media, entertainment, oil and gas, FMCG, Financial Technology and transportation.

Efosa is a fervent believer in talent development and mentorship. From time to time, he takes time off to personally mentor and invest in talent development. He says that the sustainability of the PR and Media industry can only be achieved when young professionals have the good support system they need to thrive.

By Joseph Ekeng

Nigeria’s National Award in the Dust: Is Chimamanda Adichie Unpatriotic?

The decision by Chimamanda Adichie to turn down Nigeria’s national honour has again brought the ceremony under public scrutiny, with questions raised about the award’s integrity.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author, recently snubbed President Muhammadu Buhari and rejected the National Award conferred on her. The popular feminist was supposed to be among the over 400 Nigerians to be honoured in commemoration of Nigeria’s 62 independent anniversary, but she turned down the Order of Federal Republic (OFR) honour.

Why did Chimamanda reject the award?

Her aide Omowumi Ogbe confirmed the rejection to the press, but she gave no reason. Adichie was billed to receive the award at the ceremony, which took place on October 11.

Ogbe said Adichie neither attended the event nor accepted the award, conveying her non-acceptance “privately.” But even though

the rejection was done in private, it managed to spill into the public domain and generated a lot of mixed reactions.

A section of the public slammed Adichie, accusing her of being arrogant. Some said rejecting the award was unpatriotic and a dishonour to the nation and office of the President. While many others applauded her, adding that accepting the award would be tantamount to an endorsement of the Buhari administration, which has glaringly failed in its governance responsibility, leaving the majority of the citizens more impoverished and unsecured. Most analysts believe that the administration’s failure is largely due to weak policies and incompetence.

Nevertheless, was Chimamanda’s action justified? Did she bring disrepute to one of Nigeria’s most iconic recognitions?

public debate about whether the government is genuinely sensitive to the plights of the Nigerian people.

Should the award show have been a priority, given that the country is in an unprecedented social and environmental crisis? Indeed, almost every other sector of the country is challenged, and Nigerians are calling for help and empathy.

ASUU Strike lasted eight months

Chimamanda

was not the first to reject the national award

To be clear, Chimamanda is not the first Nigerian to turn down such honour in Nigeria. She is in the same company as Chinua Achebe, Woke Soyinka and Gani Fawenhimi, who have, at one time or another other, shunned the recognition. Achebe, whose book, “things fall apart” has been listed as one of the greatest classics, rejected the national awards on two occasions - 2004 and 2011.

Achebe said he could not accept the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) award because he was not pleased with the handling of state affairs by the then Olusegun Obasanjo administration. His name came up for recognition again in 2011, but he turned it down, stressing that the reason for his previous rejection had not changed.

In 2014, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka declined the award to protest being lumped together with former dictator General Sani Abacha. Soyinka said he could not share the same award podium with the late head-of-state, whom he described as a “murderer and thief of no redeeming quality.”

In 2008, late human rights activist and lawyer Gani Fawehinmi also refused to accept the award of OFR, citing many years of misrule.

Is the award a priority

Adichie’s action is not the first time she has shown contempt for the government. She recently called out the Buhari government for treating Nigerians with discontent. But one thing that her rejection has achieved is to intensify the

The education sector is broken and needs urgent fixing. This is evident by the grounding of academic activities for eight months as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on industrial action to protest the rot in the tertiary education system. That is a whole academic session lost. Education is the bedrock for future economic growth and development, but a long, needless strike of this nature threatens Nigeria’s prosperity.

Inflation highest in 17 years

A few days ago, Nigeria’s inflation rose to 20.8%, the highest in 17 years.

The implication is that most Nigerian households are struggling to have necessities. If the trajectory continues, companies may have no choice but to cut more jobs and perhaps shut down, which could worsen the already bad unemployment situation in the country.

Flood ravages 25 states

While the FG gathered dignitaries in Abuja to celebrate the award in a lavish ceremony, many parts of Nigeria were submerged in an unprecedented flood that has claimed about 600 lives, displaced over 9000 and destroyed properties worth billions. No less than 25 states are affected by the natural disaster, which threatens the nation’s food security.

Ironically, while foreign governments have pledged assistance in the form of relief materials, as at the time of writing this report, the Federal Government has yet to make any definite policy statement on how to address the situation and provide relief to millions of desperate Nigerians who need help.

So, even though the rationale behind Chimamanda’s action remains unknown, one can deduce that her motives may not be far from these issues. Yet, her decision provides another opportunity for the Nigerian government to do some soulsearching and take another look in the mirror in a bid to address some of the failures that have become obvious and detrimental to the public interest.

By Damilola Akinlude

SHOPANDRELLA

Andrella Okwuosah

Making my sketches come alive has been a dream come true. From the drawn lines to the stitched seams, it’s been a wonderful journey. ShopAndrella was birthed to design Bespoke & contemporary outfits for the Modern Woman. I have learnt a lot & appreciated each client. It has been a wonderful experience.

Connect with me on Twitter- @shopAndrella

AIKHOMOGBE DANIEL IRENE

I am a salesman in prints that loves creating great ads copies and content for campaigns, website, blogs, landing pages etc. I use my creative writing to help brands appeal to their audience for a call to action.

I also help businesses grow through Digital Marketing and i teach young people how to weave words perfectly to get their targeted audience through storytelling

I write and I create.

SOCIAL MEDIA CHAMPS

BAYO ALABI

Bayo Alabi

is a social media marketing expert who specializes in helping entrepreneurs scale and grow their businesses on social media. He is a specialist in Content Creation, Social Media Management and Social Media Paid Ads.

Connect with me on Instagram @bayoalabiofficial

29BYADELÉ

Adeola Adele

Brand Summary: 29byAdelé is an independent womenswear clothing brand that was established in January 2021 with a creative spirit to create timeless essentials for the modern-day woman. Our goal is to reinvent a modern approach to fashion and cater to every woman’s needs at every turn in her lifestyle.

Connect with us on Twitter @29byAdele

SOCIAL MEDIA CHAMPS

BLESSING GODFREY

Slayon Extensions

Slayon Extensions is a company that caters to the average woman’s desire for gorgeous hair. We provide the best human hair extensions ranging from our Malaysian hair bundles, Peruvian hair bundles, Magic Bounce bundles etc. Our experience with supplying quality hair has set us apart over the years.

Instagram: slayon_extensions

VEEBCOLLECTIONS

Bernard Veronica

Short Summary of your Business: I started my business around 2018, and it has been hectic dealing with all the forces that work against a small business in Nigeria. Selling female fashion items, knowing that you’re not the only one in this niche, I had to work extra hard at getting my online presence noticed. Taking digital marketing online courses to broaden my horizon on what can be done better, how to stand out. Still on it, still learning.

Twitter- @veebcollections || Email: Veebcollections@gmail.com

ADAEZE ‘DEXY’ ONU

Dexy Creation

Dexycreation is a sustainable fashion brand for women founded on building women’s self-identity while paying attention to African heritage stories, details and premium delivery.

Our goal is to make a strong positive impact in the women’s community through fashion, imparting relevant skills and other engagements related to women.

Connect with us on Instagram @dexycreation and @dexy_creation

FEMI OLUKOYA

Tweetshirt NG

Tweetshirt

is a Nigerian fashion company subsidiary of Digital Phantom Inc with focus on leveraging the user interface (UI) of our favorite social media channels (Twitter and Facebook) to personalize clothing and fashion.

Twitter - @tweetshirt_ng

GLO : A Strong African Brand Built on the Back of Mega Influencers

Article || By: Wale Ameen

Globacom is one of the most iconic indigenous brands out of Nigeria, nay Africa. When a list of top indigenous brands in Nigeria is drawn up, the name Globacom will most certainly feature prominently on that list.

The Globacom brand has come a long way and stands as a strong reminder to anyone that with the spirit of resilience and a can-do spirit, they can achieve just about anything they set their mind on.

How the journey started

The privatisation of the telecommunications sector in the early 2000s by the Olusegun Obasanjo led administration saw the emergence of private telecommunications brands, but Glo was Nigeria’s pride of the lot. Many can still recall with nostalgia how Glo launched with a bang with per second billing back in August 2003 to wide acclaim and quickly grew to become the darling of many Nigerians. This was despite the claims by other brands at the time that it was impossible to run on per second billing offering.

Milestones

The brand has since gone on to record some record breaking milestones since its launch. In its first year of operation, it had one million subscribers in over 87 towns in Nigeria and made over 120 billion naira in revenue. As at November 2020, Glo had over 45 million subscribers as at December 2018. By November 2020, it had hit 54 million subscribers.

How has the brand gone on to make such an impressive mark and stand toe to toe with others and even surpass some others. Looking at the brand’s strategy in its growth process, it is safe to say that one of the dynamics it has employed is the use of equally indigenous brand influencers.

Setting the pace in indigenous influencers adoption

Glo has gone on to show how popular indigenous celebrities can be co-opted to enhance brand value and acceptability among users. The adoption of local brand influencers, in this case referred to as “ambassadors”, is a case study that students of marketing should endeavour to understudy.

Indeed, at one point or another, we’ve all been influenced by someone in our lives, perhaps by a politician, a respected personality, a close friend, relative, total strangers, or well known celebrities. Influence is a force. An age old spell. A tool with the power to persuade.

Being credible as a business has everything to do with establishing trust with consumers and demonstrating that your business has the knowledge to implement the solutions they seek. Being relatable as a business is about connecting with the consumer on a personal level. It’s about injecting warmth into your brand by showing consumers you’re just like them.

Influence is thus a key factor in achieving this, as a brand can easily leverage the trust that users have in the influencers. Apparently, the Globacom brand understood this and has explored this provision to the fullest.

In today’s social media controlled world, influence is now a form of lucre. Careers and brands are now being built via this means. There are influencers for virtually every niche; sports, beauty, travel, fitness, and the like. It is these same individuals

that Glo has turned to, to grow its brand to such an enviable position.

According to the Journal of Advertising Research, companies that collaborated with celebrities in their marketing campaigns experienced a weekly boost in sales of up to 4%. Globacom exemplifies this.

Working with mega influencers comes with a lot of benefits. As you collaborate with an influencer and they talk about your services and products on their social media accounts, you tap into the influencer’s audience and may potentially get a boost in sales.

Globacom has gone on to show just exactly how it’s done in this realm. It has leveraged the reach of several notable Nigerians to drive home its message among Nigerians.

It is on record that Glo was one of the first few companies to start massive brand influencing in Nigeria by signing on A lists stars in the country, with the likes of actors, musicians, comedians, and even sports stars.

This has achieved two things; one, it has boosted the morale of these influencers; and secondly, it has also increased the brand value and relatability of the telecommunication brand.

In 2015 alone, Glo signed an impressive list of 28 brand ambassadors drawn from Nigeria’s entertainment industry. This was made up of 20 brand ambassadors whose contracts were being renewed and an addition of nine new faces. It was by far the largest number of brand influencers signed on by any company at the time.

The influencers included Wizkid, popular comedians Ayo Makun (AY) and Bovi Ugboma, award-winning actor OC Ukeje, Patience Ozokwo (Mama G), Odunlade Adekola, fast-rising Marvin Crew of Koredo Bello, Reekado Banks, and Hadizah Blell (Di’ja).

Those who had their contracts renewed were: music stars D’Banj, Peter and Paul Okoye (PSquare), Chinedu Okoli (Flavour), Jude Abaga (M.I), Wande Coal, Omawumi Megbele, Bez Idakula, Burna Boy, Ego Ogbaro, Sammie Okposo and Sani Danja.

Others who made a return as Glo brand ambassadors were comedian Basketmouth, actresses Ini Edo, Funke Akindele, and Helen Paul. The rest are Ime Bishop Umoh, John Okafor (Mr. Ibu), Chiwetalu Agu and popular newscaster, Bimbo Oloyede.

Recently, the telecommunications giant announced the signing of Nigerian sporting sensation and current African, Commonwealth and World Champion in the women’s 100m hurdles, Tobi Amusan, as its latest brand ambassador.

At the moment, the brand has more than 30 Nigerian super stars as its brand ambassadors, and in this regard, no other brand does it better.

Still going strong

Truly, Globacom has shown what is possible and, as the brand’s former Group COO, Mohammed Jameel, said, “The biggest marketing lesson Globacom has taught is that if you have a desire, will, and passion to conquer a market with a product or service, don’t look at where you are coming from. Don’t look at the huge competition facing you. Don’t look at the market already dominated by players in the market. Be aggressive and go to the market and do your best.”

If there’s anyone walking the talk and championing the use of indigenous faces as brand ambassadors, then it’s Globacom. In return, the telecommunication giant has also reaped bountifully from this as it continues to grow in leaps and bounds across Africa and continues to enjoy wide brand appeal.

Glo’s impressive list of brand ambassadors

Is Africa’s Tech Funding Rush Over? The Story of SA Snapt’s Shutdown

Over the years, the African tech landscape has been in the global spotlight as startups rake in foreign direct investments in millions of dollars. Over the years, young Africans with brilliant ideas have created solutions to the continent’s unique challenges and have been able to attract investments to the delight and applause of the ecosystem.

The figures

According to WeeTracker, African startups attracted a record high investment of $1.34 billion in venture capital in 2019 alone, with fintech alone attracting $678.73 million, while it attracted a total investment sum of $1.7 billion in 2020.

In 2021, the momentum continued with African startups raising over $4 billion across 355 funding deals. This number is almost 3x what was raised in 2020 and 2019, when the ecosystem recorded $1.7 billion and $1.3 billion respectively.

This shows the massive progression in investment African tech startups have continually seen over the years. However, recent turn of events appear to suggest that there is somewhat wariness on the part of investors and a slowing down of investment funds into the continent.

Earlier this year, Venture Capital funding fell below $40 billion for about the very first time in the space of a year. According to Crunchbase, VC funding stood at $9 billion, 20 per cent lower from $49 billion recorded a year earlier in 2021. So, is this the beginning of the end for FDI into the African tech space?

The fall of Snapt

The recent announcement by South African based software company, Snapt that it was pulling the curtains on its security service solution has left many wondering if the era of investment rain could now be over.

Founded in 2012, Snapt “provides load balancing, acceleration, security, and caching for websites, applications, and services”. Simply put, Snapt helps make websites and apps faster and more responsive.

The technology startup has, over the last six years of its existence, been able to raise $4 million in cumulative funding rounds. In 2016, it raised $1 million in a seed round led by Convergence Partners, and a $3 million Series A round in 2018.

At least from the information that is publicly available, all appeared to have been going on smoothly for the startup.

In 2015, it reported that 85% of its client

base was in the US and proceeded to establish an independent sales and marketing arm there. At the time, CEO Dave Blakey told Disrupt Africa that the company was aiming to achieve a 1,000% annual growth rate.

More recently, in May 2022, Snapt launched an AI-powered security package, Snapt Nova that was set to help over 3.9 million Kubernetes users optimise production of applications.

With all this, it was a shocker for many to hear about the imminent winding down of the startup’s business.

“Given recent unforeseen events, outside of our control, Snapt has been left with no option but to cease operations immediately, as we believe this is in the best interests of our staff and clients. We are extremely saddened by this, especially given the recent growth of the business, and grateful for all the amazing interactions we’ve had with our clients over the years,” the company said in a note.

The reason it gave for this? It had run out of funding!

This scenario certainly raises a number of questions about the continued viability of the African tech landscape and whether this is it of investors’ bullish appetite to invest in the still burgeoning continent.

To put the scenario in context, it is important to note that Snapt’s announcement follows the shutdown of Kenyan food tech Kune, agritech WeFarm, and Notify Logistics shut down. This is likely to also be followed by Sky.Garden, a Kenyan B2C marketplace as its CEO, Martin Majlund, earlier announced to employees, the company is almost out of money.

These scenarios actually bring one to question the modus operandi of tech startups and how much value they are actually offering to assure investors of their profitability and scalability.

Questions, questions and more questions

Aside from the question of funding, certain questions come to the fore. First is how well the funds raised by tech startups are utilised to justify their operations. Secondly is the issue of projections put on paper by these startups. One wonders if startups are not just unnecessarily “blowing up” the figures just to curry investors’ attention.

There is so much the public needs to know about Snapt’s story and its sudden closure, and further developments will certainly reveal this.

The truth is, any investor is only investing with the sole aim of maximising his or her investment and getting back his or her returns in due time. In a situation where this turns out not to be so as stated by founders, investors will naturally pull back as they want justifiable reasons why they should commit more resources to such a startup.

Startup Funding: A Global Overview

Despite the massive growth recorded in African tech startups, startup funding on the continent is still a mere fraction of the world’s funding of startups. According to CB Insights State of the Venture Report, it represented only 1% of the world’s venture funding in the first quarter of 2022. So it’s understandable that the trends in major markets have little to no effect on Africa.

The African market is distinct. Its development isn’t like the others. In markets like the US

and Europe, there has been plenty of focus on improving already existing solutions, e.g. making deliveries faster in e-commerce. Meanwhile, in Africa, solutions like ed-tech, fintech and telemedicine are still in their early stages.

So while consumers in Europe or the US are looking to reduce their expenses in response to the economic crunch it is not so for African startups, for example a customer might dump a fast-delivery service or an investment app, a mobile banking or mental health startup is less likely to be dropped.

Matters Arising

Aside from the issues of due diligence and projections, another issue a number of industry watchers have pointed out is how

every startup on the continent appears to be offering almost the same service.

Most fintech startups that closed investment deals offer the same service, mobile payment. It is evident that most of these founders and investors are concentrating on the same market. And while the conversation always comes back to how large the market is, a Rest of World report shows how most tech startups don’t have data on their market. According to the report, many investments were based on hype, not due diligence. And if that hype cycle loses momentum, we might see a decline in startup funding.

For now, it remains to be seen just how investors will tilt, but hopefully, startups will tighten their belts in the areas of due diligence and the continent will hopefully continue to witness the investment rain.

10 Free & Low Budget Marketing Ideas For Any Business

By Wale Ameen

Marketing is the art of promoting a business and selling products or services. This includes activities such as market research and advertising. According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), it is the management process for identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer requirements profitably.

Brand marketing raises brand awareness, generates traffic, increases business revenue, builds trust and also you track your metrics.

Unfortunately, many small businesses are constrained by a limited marketing budget as they have limited resources. As such, the low or zero budget marketing ideas can be a lifesaver. To bridge this gap, here are 10 free and low budget marketing ideas to help your business grow and be able to compete with other brands

1. Smart Use of Social Media

Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2021, over 4.26 billion people accessed social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost six billion in 2027.

Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is one of the free ways you can maximise to grow your small business while expressing your brand’s personality and building trust with your

audience. Creating a business account on social media platforms will only take you a few minutes.

Today, a plethora of social media platforms exist, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and many others. Leveraging on this will not only give the business a wider coverage but also give a face to the business, as people will find it easy to interact with businesses more on social media.

Sponsored ads are very cheap to implement on social media platforms, depending on the length of time you want the ad to run for. And with the kind of algorithm social media platforms possess these days, you can be sure of reaching larger audiences with the smart use of social media.

2. Low Cost Influencer Marketing

Macro and micro influencers have a lot pull when it comes to product marketing. Macro influencers can be a bit on the expensive side, but micro influencers are still really affordable for most brands.

They also possess diverse reach, where macro influencers offer a large audience, using a group of micro influencers can be beneficial to diversifying your reach, they have potentials of a high engagement rate, they also have niche audiences that have higher conversion rate, They will usually go the extra mile to create high quality content and impress their brand partners. They engage with your product information directly to gain a deeper understanding of your brand, thus making their recommendations more credible. So, engaging one or more micro influencers will help to boost the business and reach wider audiences.

3. Build a Website

The world we are now living in is totally a digital world, and almost every one accesses the internet for information about brands and desired products.

Having a professional website is one of the most important assets you need to create for your small business. This is where you

will show who you are, what you offer, where you are located, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.

So, if you have a business and do not have a website yet, it is high time you opt for a website. A website comes at a very cheap rate; it offers a high degree of accessibility to prospective clients as it is available 24/7; it helps improve sales, and aids in targeted marketing. It also gives the business the credibility that it needs, as a website helps you gain your customers’ trust.

A website can be an excellent option for ensuring customer satisfaction. If you have a website, it will be one of the best options for increasing lead conversion. So, building a website is also one of the few marketing ideas that come with a very low budget.

4. Encourage Your Customers To Share Their Experiences

When a happy customer talks about how great your company is on social media or a review site, your product or service gets more value. Even on social media, word of mouth still serves as a huge factor that influences many people’s purchasing decisions. If a prospect sees a colleague talking about your business on Twitter or if they post a photo of a product they bought from you on Instagram, they will most likely go for it. After all, 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals.

If customers are telling you they love your product, encourage them to share the experience on their social media accounts or leave comments on yours. If you have a physical business, you might also want to put signs up with your handles so customers know who to tag if they post a picture of your product.

5. Attend Industry/Networking Events

Attending trade shows and industry conferences is a clever way to take your small business to the next level. These events bring together business minds from all industries who want to find new marketing strategies to grow their business. It’s also

a way to connect with like-minded people and develop new contacts. In addition, these events have exclusive seminars planned to refine your skills in sales, social media, advertising and other ways of promoting your small business.

6. Create A Strategy For Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool for attracting new consumers and keeping the ones you already have happy. Although it has been around for quite a while now, it is still one of the best cost-effective ways small businesses can employ to increase sales and patronage.

7. Organise A Conference Or Webinar

Another marketing idea you can employ is that of organising conferences and webinars. This positions you as an authority in that particular field and also spreads the word about your brand. Webinars have proven over time to be a huge indirect marketing channel to spread the word about personal and business brands.

A small company’s services may be directly linked to an event in certain situations. A fashion show featuring models in hair and makeup could be held by a salon owner interested in selling memberships to raise awareness of the benefits of doing so. Another option is to demonstrate how to apply cosmetics or style one’s hair at home to boost sales at the store.

Webinars can be an effective way to generate leads and expand your email list if you can present a topic that is likely to attract members of your target audience.

8. Form Industry Partnerships

No matter the industry you find yourself or are operating in, partnerships are a vital tool for any business. This is another tool you should consciously adopt as a marketing tool to spread the word about your business. You can team up with other business owners in your industry and not necessarily direct competitors.

Partnering with another business means twice as much notice and exposure to a whole new audience related to your niche.

You need to put careful thought and effort into it if you want to form a profitable partnership. Clarify what your expectations are, engage with businesses that are consistent and trust worthy, and assess how you can work together, and have several conversations before making things official.

9. Host Social Media Giveaways or Contest

Running a social media contest or giveaway is a smart and effective marketing strategy that requires minimal resources. You may need to cough up some dough for a prize, or offer a product service at no charge, but at the end of the day, you will realise that the number of participants and potential new leads that will come your way will be well worth the price. So you are thinking; but I’m really tight on budget. How do I pull this off? Well, you don’t technically need a super expensive prize to get participants. Offering a free product or service might just be it.

Even though there are a number of different social media contest types you can pick from out there, the main idea is to require registrants to like, follow, or tag your business, or tag someone else in your post, to get your name out there and introduce potential clients to your services.

10. Search Engine Optimization

The best way to promote your business online is by using SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring the site ranks highly on the list of results returned by a search engine when particular keywords are searched for.

According to research by WolfGang Digital, online businesses receive over 35% of total traffic and 33% of revenue from the results of search engines. So, invest in SEO, and you most certainly will not regret the decision.

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