Are Nigerian Advertising creatives technology lazy?
That was the catch 22 topic I was asked to handle during my keynote speech at the 2010 Pre-Award Seminar for the Lagos Advertising & Ideas Festival (LAIF) awards and organized by the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN). Catch 22 because I used to be a full fledged creative before extending my playing field into Brand management, Account Planning and now Digital Marketing.
I did however lay some facts on the table during my session - us folks practicing digital marketing are not saying this is the silver bullet - take one digital pill today and your brand will be successful tomorrow. Nope. Rather, I am saying communications practitioners need to better think INTEGRATION of platforms to tell effective brand stories - and this is where the digital platforms come in.
There is the vital issue of lack of KNOWLEDGE however - if you don't know a thing, ain't taught that thing...well, you won't know the thing! Simple. Lack of knowledge stems from lack of serious interest by Agency heads in appreciating the advantages of adding digital media to their communication repertoire and so do not encourage training of any sort - they feel once they allow the creatives access to Facebook that should be enough.
Some creative people also, like normal human beings are quite comfortable thank you, in believing that old sing along about how low the internet penetration in Nigeria is and all that. Hnmmm. 43.9m is no small figure. Considering a year ago it was 23.9m. More on that later.
2nd myth I had to bust that hot afternoon was the one about Digital = Online.
I had to patiently explain that the playing field is broader and includes Mobile, Web (content development and the popular advertising); Digital OOH in broad terms.
For some reason, the compere of the panel session tried to set up an us vs them situation between digital media advocates and 'pure' creative/advertising practitioners. If it were to have been a real fight I would have thrown the fight as the representative for the Creative people was no less a person than lovely Nnenna Onyewuchi.- Creative director at ZK Advertising Nigeria.
Time unfortunately was the enemy at the session but we took a couple of questions from the audience dominated more by Account Management executives than creatives (probably in the backroom at the agency working!)
Of tons of interest and reflective of the current levels of understanding by ad practitioners in Nigeria themselves is the following conversation thread I created on my Facebook page and which garnered quite a lot of diverse feedback.
You will probably find your point of view somewhere in there. Quite a few extreme positions by the way. Hopefully you will also find that there are more opportunities out there in thinking Integrated Marketing when approaching use of digital marketing for your brands: (Am trying to get permission from the participants before posting their comments here)
Cheers
Dayo
Dayo Adefila recently became Chief Operating Officer of Hotsauce, an innovative digital marketing firm based in Lagos, Nigeria.
I did however lay some facts on the table during my session - us folks practicing digital marketing are not saying this is the silver bullet - take one digital pill today and your brand will be successful tomorrow. Nope. Rather, I am saying communications practitioners need to better think INTEGRATION of platforms to tell effective brand stories - and this is where the digital platforms come in.
There is the vital issue of lack of KNOWLEDGE however - if you don't know a thing, ain't taught that thing...well, you won't know the thing! Simple. Lack of knowledge stems from lack of serious interest by Agency heads in appreciating the advantages of adding digital media to their communication repertoire and so do not encourage training of any sort - they feel once they allow the creatives access to Facebook that should be enough.
Some creative people also, like normal human beings are quite comfortable thank you, in believing that old sing along about how low the internet penetration in Nigeria is and all that. Hnmmm. 43.9m is no small figure. Considering a year ago it was 23.9m. More on that later.
2nd myth I had to bust that hot afternoon was the one about Digital = Online.
I had to patiently explain that the playing field is broader and includes Mobile, Web (content development and the popular advertising); Digital OOH in broad terms.
For some reason, the compere of the panel session tried to set up an us vs them situation between digital media advocates and 'pure' creative/advertising practitioners. If it were to have been a real fight I would have thrown the fight as the representative for the Creative people was no less a person than lovely Nnenna Onyewuchi.- Creative director at ZK Advertising Nigeria.
Time unfortunately was the enemy at the session but we took a couple of questions from the audience dominated more by Account Management executives than creatives (probably in the backroom at the agency working!)
Of tons of interest and reflective of the current levels of understanding by ad practitioners in Nigeria themselves is the following conversation thread I created on my Facebook page and which garnered quite a lot of diverse feedback.
You will probably find your point of view somewhere in there. Quite a few extreme positions by the way. Hopefully you will also find that there are more opportunities out there in thinking Integrated Marketing when approaching use of digital marketing for your brands: (Am trying to get permission from the participants before posting their comments here)
Cheers
Dayo
Dayo Adefila recently became Chief Operating Officer of Hotsauce, an innovative digital marketing firm based in Lagos, Nigeria.
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