LAIF 2016: Let the award begin
It’s finally here. The 2016 Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival begins today in Lagos. A two day event has been lined up starting with a seminar which holds today. Saturday night is the grand finale where the most creative agencies in Nigeria in the past 12 calendar months will be honored.
Over 500 entries have been received across Nigerian agencies, and Clement Omemu, former CEO of Rosabel Advertising and now CEO of Black Sea Advertising, alongside 10 other advertising veterans have the onerous task to separate the boys from the men among the hundreds of entries.
The award promises to be an exciting and highly competitive event going by the creative exploits of some Nigerian agencies in the year under review and the renewed sense of competitiveness in the industry. Noah’s Ark which emerged the star of last year’s LAIF, winning a total of 10 medals, including the only Grand Prix, five gold, two silver and two bronze medals has been tipped by many to be one of the big winners.
The agency has set a positive pace for this years’ LAIF by a series of accomplishments in major international awards like the Loeries and Cristal. Like it did at 2015 LAIF, Noah’s Ark shocked many when it won one silver and two bronze medals at the 2016 Loeries.
And before the euphoria of Loeries could die down, the eight years old ad shop added another international feather to it cap by winning a total of five medals- two Cristals (gold), and three emeralds (bronze) at the African Cristal Festival, in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The 2016 Cristal also gave X3M Ideas its first international recognition. The agency won a Bronze for “Best use of Social Media” courtesy of the agency’s work for Etisalat. The four year old agency, which clinched three Gold medals, two Silver and three Bronze to emerge the 4th on the 2015 LAIF medal table, has been tipped as one of the top dogs in this year’s LAIF.
However, X3M Ideas, which prides itself as the most creative agency out of Nigeria- the agency still needs to prove that- must now better its 2015 haul if it must be considered as one of the dominant players in industry.
Insight Publicis no doubt is a creative powerhouse in Nigeria, and the years 2016 has been a busy one for the 36 year old ad shop on the global award arena. The agency which has for many years been “LongThroating” for the Cannes Lion, which it again failed to win this year, has however received several other international accolades for its creativity in the course of the year. This included nine bronze medals at Cristal.
The agency apparently wanted more at Marrakesh and thus decided not to celebrate that award.
However, Insight Publicis is the agency behind, the highly successful Pepsi LongThroat campaign, which won it a WARC recently. The agency is ‘longthroating’ for even more medals at the forthcoming LAIF on the back of the inspiring outcome of the Pepsi campaign.
Interestingly, it seems like Insight Publicis may have to worry less about DDB Lagos this time around; it long term rival on the LAIF award arena. Both agency have been the most dominant in recent history of the award, but it seems like the Ikechi Odigbo led agency may not be one of the big challengers at this year’s event.
While Noah’s Ark, Insight and X3M Ideas have been doing the industry proud by winning international laurels, DDB Lagos have been curiously missing in action. Yet, the agency, which remains one of the biggest and most creative shops in Nigeria, is still expected to put up a decent showing when LAIF begins.
So, while all eyes will be on Insight Publicis, Noah’s Ark, DDB Lagos, X3M Ideas, Rosabel Advertising, SO&U and a couple of others, there are perhaps a number of young and enterprising agencies doing great things. Many of them are not popular names, but this year’s LAIF may just be the platform for them to announce their arrival to the mainstream of Nigerian advertising.
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