A hug and a million accomplishments: The duo that excites

Ever heard of friendship goals? Here’s one you would love to emulate. It doesn’t get better than two men who have remained passionate and professional in their trade and industry. They are the indomitable duo who are known and renowned. These are formidable players in the Nigerian Out-of-Home advertising sector of the Integrated Marketing Communications industry in Nigeria.

Meet the jolly Admen rocking Nigeria’s OOH market: Dozie Mbanefo and John Uduak Bassey

Dozie Mbanefo, an adman and an entrepreneur per excellence is a practitioner with style and panache. He has a rich pedigree and track records of performance spanning over twenty years of practice. He attained national prominence and reckoning in 2018 when he was conferred with the National Productivity Order of Merit award by President Muhammadu Buhari. President Buhari described him as one of the few young Nigerian entrepreneurs who were creatively impacting on the Nigerian corporate sector through their productive inputs. He was also nominated for Creative Leadership in Outdoor Advertising practice by MARKETING EDGE Brands & Advertising Excellence Awards in 2018.

With a degree in Engineering, Mbanefo has MBA and has received several trainings on Advertising and Marketing in Europe, America and Nigeria. This compliments his over 20 years experience in outdoor advertising and over 10 years of management in the sub-sector.

Dozie, the CEO and founder of New Crystal Communications, a digitally savvy OOH advertising company in Nigeria, also serves as the Managing Director of DLK Oil & Gas, an oil servicing company based in Nigeria. He is also a member of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) and his outdoor advertising working experience spans over 20 years within and outside Nigeria.

John Uduak Bassey, the debonair, soft spoken Group Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer of Plural Media, is an avant-garde professional. His agency, Plural Media, a digital-driven Out-of-Home advertising company in Nigeria is a pace-setter with the CEO, a visionary and experienced entrepreneur who has built successful businesses from the scratch, particularly in marketing/media, edutech and entertainment.

A graduate of physics from the University of Calabar, Bassey also holds an MBA and a Fellow at the Institute of Brand Management of Nigeria.

Having worked as Chief Operating Officer at Virtual Technologies Ltd, Dates and Multichoice Nigeria Limited, where he changed the paradigm from ‘free tv viewing’ to pay-tv subscription with several compelling communications and marketing strategy implementations, he founded Plural Media in 2006.

Uduak Bassey is a Registered Practitioner in Advertising – APCON, and a Fellow of the Institute of Brand Management of Nigeria.

The OOH Advertising Industry

Known as the oldest form of marketing, OOH media owners are the operators of the physical billboard structures; they play an integral role in displaying creative materials from clients in the OOH advertising value chain.

Earlier this year, according to Ade Akinde, an OOH advertising industry specialist, the overall billings in the outdoor sector of Nigeria’s IMC industry would hit the N47.2 billion mark by end of the business year 2020.

OOH advertising is one of the highest catalysts for driving mobile, social and digital engagement with the customers, and the repeated marketing strategy retains the brand in the minds of the audience.

Dozie Mbanefo’s New Crystal Communications was launched in 1998. The organisation initially started out as a printing and public relations firm in 1994. The company’s portfolio covers both the public and private sectors like banking, telecommunications, Oil companies, Electronic manufacturers, Local, State and Federal Governments, Hotels, Breweries and many other high profile sectors.

The company ensures quality service that surpasses expectations.

Plural Media, on the other hand, was established in 2006. Led by John Uduak Bassey, the company was first launched in Port Harcourt, and extended its roots to Lagos till it became pan-Nigerian.

The OOH company came into Nigeria’s advertising industry with a clear perspective of challenging the ‘status-quo’ in the delivery of OOH media communications.  In 2018, the company launched a partnership with MARKETING EDGE to deliver continuous top industry news on all its digital billboards network pan-Nigeria. Plural Media provides advertisers with all the benefits of digital outdoor advertising, including minimal lead times, immediacy of posting, day-part messaging and mobile/social media convergence.

The challenges they survived

Interestingly, or at least ‘Uninterestingly’, the stakeholders, which include the advertisers and practitioners, the government and the regulatory agencies, have at one time or the other witnessed some major conflicts in the OOH industry. Advertising agencies are pressurized with multiple payments to the various arms of government.

The year 2006 saw a demolition-spree of billboards in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In 2007, Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA) protested against billboards in the state and Kano followed suit in 2012. The legal intervention of OAAN later curbed any form of recurrence, although the government activities through legislation and indebtedness to the industry also contributed to crippling the establishments, the increased charges by LASAA coupled with the impending economic recession, made 2016 another devastating year.

2020’s pandemic also shook the experiential and outdoor advertising industry, causing ad spending to fall drastically. Although a change in the regular cycle of business is allowing OOH advertisers and practitioners to re-evaluate what they have to offer and how to embrace digital advertising in the ‘new normal’, billboard revenues also declined.

Weathering the storms, Dozie Mbanefo and Uduak Bassey have led both organisations to the prestigious positions they have attained within the OOH industry in Nigeria, rocking both companies from cradle to global standard and relevance.

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