In this exclusive
interview with OLUWAGBENGA BANKOLE, the Managing Director, DDB Lagos Mr. Ikechi
Odigbo speaks on the roles of advertising in building a new Nigeria, how APCON
can eradicate quacks in the industry, how advertising can turn a brand to
household name and some other typical issues. Excerpts!
Have you been able to
achieve the aims and objectives of setting up DDB Lagos?
Since I was appointed as the Managing Director in 2010 by
the board of Caesars to manage DDB Lagos, we have been building on the successes
of the founder which is Mr. Enyi Odigbo who was able to build a robust organisation.
He still continues to provide over sight direction for DDB Lagos and other
subsidiaries within the Caesars Group.
To a large extent the objectives of setting up DDB Lagos has been achieved and the objective is to be among the top three agencies in Nigeria in terms of dealings and creativity. But the lager objective of DDB Lagos is to become the biggest and best builder of brands in Africa. For us this is enough ambition to continue to make us look for new height. Becoming the biggest builder of brand in Africa simply mean that we will begin to benchmark our services, creativity and operation against international standard. That is why for quite some time not we have found a pertinent to make entries into international awards like the Cannes and Epical Award. So far we have registered very encouraging success by been the pioneering Nigerian agency to win successively at the Epical award which was initially an European award but now a global award. We have won quiet of international award and received some recognition for operational excellent within the DDB network
As one of the
advertising gurus in Nigeria, do you think advertising in Nigeria is something
to write home about?
I believe we should be proud of success and progress we have
made so far as an industry. The advertising industry in Nigeria has continued
to grow. We have several adverting campaigns that have been develop by
advertising agencies in Nigeria for the Nigerian market that have been adapted
in other markets within Africa. Don’t let us undermine or belittle the progress
made so far but there is always significant room for improvement and that is
the evident in the fact that we still have not be able to get our local
agencies to be nominated at Cannes
award which is like the creative maker for advertising agencies globally.
We still have not been able to build a robust pipeline for
producing properly trained advertising practitioners. Right now we have several
privately run academics. Although Advertising Practitioners
Council of Nigeria (APCON) and Association of Advertising Agencies
of Nigeria (AAAN) are running some trainings but we believe that the time is
ripe for more robust trainings platform in order to make sure that we are not
just running on raw talents, but this talents are been properly school to
deliver professional solutions at the highest standard. That is where we can
really unlock the potential in the advertising industry because as thing stand
now a lot of young practitioners are running largely on their native training
and do not have the requisite training to really fulfill their true potentials.
I believe the advertising agencies could also do better in
the area of creativity considering how the entertainment and nollywood industry
have exploded. We are now seeing a maturic rise of Nigerian talents who are
even making an impression at the global stage whether it is music, movie or
comedy. If Nollywood is making such waves, advertising in Nigeria need to rise
up to the challenge and begin make bolder creative footprint within the continent
and globally because it is the same young creative Nigerians in other industry
that have been able to break through the national frontiers to make a mark as a
result of their creative expression. We
can do it also within the advertising industry.
Judging from your
wealth of experience in the industry, how can advertising turn a brand or
product to household name?
I believe that adverting transform product into brand, from
brand into household name through a constant discipline of differentiation. For
a brand to become sticky in the mind of consumers and the public in general it
must stand for something, have a point of view, address a need and it must
clearly convey a fact that it is meant for a particular type of consumer. When
this is done consistently, creatively and imaginatively the consumers and the
public will begin to subscribe to the product not for just what it does, but it
represents part of their frame of reference. It represents part of their
culture and this all come through creating top of the mind awareness and it
will begin to win the share of heart of people. This is just not come by
running one fantastic creative campaign and after people become aware you stop,
it comes with years of discipline. Very marketing oriented company like
Unilever, GSK, and MTN among others understand the recipe for brand building.
What are the roles of
advertising in building a nation?
Advertising build a nation by been educating and most
advertising sell product by promoting the culture and lifestyle of the
indigenes. Even as we see the country going into a new era of definitive change
it is going to require advertising to create and nurture a new consciousness whereby
Nigerians will begin to see that we need to go beyond our ethnic frontiers and
join hands has patriotic citizen to build a nation that we can be truly proud
of.
It is also through a national orientation campaign that is fuel
by advertising that all of these practices that has kept us back and hinder our
progress like corruption, nepotism and indiscipline, all of this negative
aspect of our culture need to be advertise through a national orientation campaign
and that is where advertising comes in. It is not enough for our leaders to say
we want to drive change. The people need to take ownership of the change.
People need to understand what change require from them at a personal level, in
terms of how they conduct themselves, how they go about their businesses, how
they make use of public service utilities and their responsibilities as citizen
of a new Nigeria.
All of these is going to require a very robust awareness
campaign that will begin to remote the mind set of Nigerians that government is
not just about building roads or hospitals, but government also depend on their
citizen to achieve those objectives by them been a responsible taxpaying
citizen who is also contributing to the development of the country.
As the publicity secretary of AAAN these are one of the
recommendations the leadership of AAAN has made to the incoming administration
that they need to engage the advertising industry with the tools in building a
national re-orientation campaign that will begin to educate an average Nigerian
on the right values, various key programmes that the government is about to
roll out because we need a lot of awareness and understanding on the part of
the public.
What can APCON do to
eradicate unregistered agencies in the industry?
With this new APCON been led by Mr. Udeme Ufot we expect to
see the implementation of the reforms which has already been adopted as law,
but for the APCON reforms to be effective in terms of execution it is necessary
for the new leadership to begin to drive adoption. With this new leadership we
are going to see a greater momentum in terms of the APCON reforms. With this
done the issue of unregistered practitioners practicing advertising will be
resolved.
What is the latest
development in DDB Lagos?
We have begun working for Interswitch and also Chivita
recently. Both of them are leaders in their categories and we intend to build
our relationship by helping them win in the market place. While we are helping
them to win in the market place we also make sure they become highly profitable
for us.
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