Marketing communications should tell more of the African story, says Adewunmi
The Managing Director/CEO at Creativezones Communications Limited, Adedoyin Adewunmi, has taken a holistic assessment of Nigeria’s Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) sector and observed that the industry has come of full age. He, however, stressed that operators in the sector need to create a niche for themselves by telling more of the African story.
For the agency boss, this assumption is founded on the reasoning that there is a new thinking driven by the digital age and artificial intelligence, hence, “marketing communications right now should start telling the African story”.
According to him, “We are used to following the ways of the people that introduced modern advertising to us by always telling their stories and we always tell other people’s stories because the brands that we have are foreign brands. For example, Coca-Cola, MTN, Airtel, Unilever and many others are foreign brands. The big ones are the foreign brands and we tell the stories in ways that they want us to tell it, in their own way.
“We need to start telling it in our way. We need to start telling our African stories the way we understand it; we need to start communicating the pride of the Africanness that we have in ourselves. We need to create our own niche in the marketing communications world. We are a very unique people, and we have very unique ways of life,” he highlighted.
On how to go about realising the objective, the agency boss explained: “That’s what am talking about, we are a very, very unique people. We have a unique way of talking; nobody, for instance, can speak Pidgin Language like the way we do. We have taken English Language to another level entirely. We made it pidgin and we speak it in a way that nobody else can understand it but ourselves, we have taken street language and everything to English Language and that’s our own way of living.
“Now we have unique dance steps; we have a unique culture; we have a unique way of relating to ourselves; we were brought up in a very unique way. These are the things that we need to bring to bear while telling our stories. We have to tell our brands stories in our own ways.”
He added: “I am very happy that if nobody else has done it well, the music industry in Nigeria has done it. Before now, we all used to listen to foreign music and stuff like that. The Micheal Jacksons of this world, Janet Jackson and all of that; but these days, nobody knows whether there is any foreign music anywhere. The local guys have taken over and they are dishing it out to us in our own way and in a very amazing manner. That’s telling the African story. So, advertising needs to follow that path and start telling that story.”
He lamented that despite the apparent development in the sector, growth in the industry was not yet going at the pace that was it was supposed to and how to overcome this remained one of the basic challenges.
“Whether we like it or not we have to move at the pace the world is moving. Like I said, it’s a digital age; the industry is going to be even more dynamic. It’s going to be more competitive and survival will depend on how adaptable you are to what is happening. Consumers are going to be more demanding, advertising messages are going to be more direct; they won’t be generic anymore,” he added.
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