There is probably no other campaign in this country that has been more fiercely criticized and resisted than the Nigeria Rebranding Campaign. Although the campaign may have its problems, I think it is borne out of the same genuine passion that many Nigerians share for the nation. It may not be immediately apparent how much we love our country as Nigerians until something elicits a response in that direction. The recent outburst and outright condemnation by Nigerians from various parts of the world of Sony’s Playstation ad that portrayed Nigeria in bad light is a confirmation. However, although Nigerians share this love for the nation, a strategically coordinated effort is required to harness this latent passion for the general good of the country. For this reason I commend the Honourable Minister of Information and Communications Professor Dora Akunyili and her team for work done so far on the Re-branding campaign.
I have heard many people say we should fix our infrastructures first before we begin to run any campaign. They have a point. After all we all know the popular saying that the fastest way to kill a bad product is to advertise it. But really, Nigeria is not a bad product and we should take advantage of the power of communication. Sometimes communication is where you start from. A well crafted message is potent enough to cause a transformation and in this sense can be a catalyst for the infrastructural development we all yearn for. Even if we think the leaders are those who require the change the most, because they are an integral part of the nation, they will not be immune to the impact of the message.
Having established that we require a well structured communication, I want to point out what in my opinion is wrong with the present campaign and needs to be addressed so we can move to the next phase. Firstly, re-branding is a technical term which only refers to a shift in the way the image of place, person, group, product or service is expected to be perceived. It does not assign a value to this change and does not necessarily mean a change from negative to positive. In fact there are brands that do not want a “good” image for strategic reasons. I used to work on Pepsi account as a copywriter and part of the brand character for Pepsi at that time was to be ‘irreverent’. The word re-branding has now become a synonym for corrective attitudinal change. This for me is an abuse of the expression. A successful re-branding process should end with a pen portrait of the new desired character. That is where the re-branding should stop. The new brand image will now form an element in the “Creative Strategy” from which the desired campaign will be developed. Re-branding should not be a continuous process and should not be the theme of the campaign.
Coming to the slogan “Good people, Great nation”, I think rather than the slogan, it should form the objective of the campaign. I believe that as the objective of the campaign, that is: “to cause people to perceive Nigeria as a great nation of good people”, it is an achievable goal because the claims are fundamentally true. There are good people in Nigeria and we have lots of examples to buttress this point and obviously Nigeria is a great nation in terms of population, land mass, crude oil, sports, skilled manpower etc.
I do not think that it will be very productive to confront the audience with a message like “good people, great nation” mainly for two reasons. Firstly, it is not a unique proposition. many nations can claim the same thing. Secondly and even more importantly, although the statement is true in certain respects, it is not believable, because it is not consistent with the experience of the audience. How can you say the people are good, when stories of armed robbery, kidnap and fraud fill the news everyday? How can you say the nation is great, when there are no roads, water or electricity? The truth is that the same problems may arise even when you talk about developed nations because life is not perfect anywhere. It is difficult to stay completely on the rational level when you’re trying to sell patriotism. That is why the famous line by former American President, J.F. Kennedy “Don’t think about what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” has remained relevant to this day. And this is where the ingenuity of the creative team in the advertising agency comes in. A good creative team of Copywriter and Art Director should be able to pass the message without offending the sensibilities of people. Sometimes, an idea is better sold to the heart rather than the head. And when we choose to sideline professionals, things don’t always turn out right.
In closing, I want to recount this story of how communication was used to successfully turn around the fortunes of a community. In 2007, Yubari City in Hokkaido, Japan, went bankrupt with a debt of $353 million. They hired Beacon Communications, Tokyo to promote the city, reenergize its citizens, and help them pay off the debt. After a detailed study of the city, they realized that Yubari recorded the lowest rate of divorce in Japan. They built their PR strategy around this subtle finding and developed the idea, ‘Yubari, no money but love.’ This became a very successful campaign that turned Yubari City into a tourist destination and helped them come out of debt. This campaign won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2009. Communication is the most powerful tool in today’s world. It drives the economy, it drives politics, and it drives social life. We can use it positively to build our nation.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Cannes Lions Rewind
Now and again, you hear people advancing various arguments as to why Nigerian agencies can or can not win a Cannes Lion. This sort of argument is just as irritating as hearing a lady watching a beauty pageant on TV, telling those around how the winner did not deserve the crown and is not as good looking as she is.
The point is, even if you’re better qualified, you need to be part in a competition first to win. It’s strange to expect to win, when you’re not even listed as a competitor or to accuse jury members of being biased against you when they don’t even know you. That is exactly the way I feel about those debates.
This year Nigeria entered 3 materials in the film category and this is a great improvement from the zero record of 2008. In this category the total entries received was 3,453 and only 261 entries made the short list. We don’t need to be statisticians to know that assuming all the entries were of equal strength (after all they’ve all come for world championship) the chance of a Nigerian material making the shortlist was very slim. Compare Nigeria’s total of 3 entries to South Africa’s 732 entries.
Success is by strategy and hard work. I think we’ve done enough of the talking. It’s time to go to work. 2010 is already around the corner. Let’s go back to our various agencies and offices and develop ideas to solve the numerous social and business challenges that we have in our society today. And we have more than a fair share, really. It is in doing this that we can excel not only at Cannes, but as a nation. Everybody can recognize a great idea. It may be dressed in, but definitely not masked by colour, culture or language - and this is what Cannes Lions is all about.
Above winning awards, Cannes Lions is a forum for learning from the masters of the industry. Cannes Lions 2009 featured 50 seminars and 20 workshops anchored by great names from around the world including. Even the presentations of the winning materials were case studies on how specific problems have been successfully managed in different parts of the world. A good example is the Beacon Communications, Tokyo entry ‘Yubari’ to promote the Yubari Resort. This is their story.
In 2007, Yubari City in Hokkaido, Japan, went bankrupt with a debt of $353 million. Beacon Communications, Tokyo was hired to promote Yubari, reenergize its citizens, and help them pay off the dept. After a detailed study of the city, they realized that Yubari recorded the lowest rate of divorce in the whole of Japan and built their PR strategy around this subtle finding. Based on this they generated the idea, ‘Yubari, no money but love.’ This became a very successful campaign that helped Yubari City to come out of debt. This campaign did not only solve a real problem, it went on to win a Grand Prix. So, it’s really not just about awards. It’s about providing quality solutions to real challenges. The awards are to celebrate these great creative ideas and honour the people behind them.
We have placed top priority on learning and equipping the next generation. The Young Lions Competitions and the Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy provide us with the opportunity to achieve this. This year Nigeria presented 6 youths at the event. Two of them participated in the highly demanded Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy, which is a one week intensive training programme for international students who intend to practice advertising on graduation.
As a new introduction this year to our selection process for the Nigeria Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy delegate, we hold seminars for all the attendees before they go through the test administered by APCON. The reason for this is so that those who will not go on to attend the Festival in France would have learnt a lot from some of the best industry figures in Nigeria. In 2010, we will further improve on this idea by holding a full one-week residential course for the students from all over the country to prepare them for the industry and also to select our special delegate to Cannes Lions 2010.
Our strategy is to cause a turnaround in the industry by continually exposing as many youths as possible to the Festival, so that we can have such a large pool of young Nigerian creatives who will not be satisfied with anything but work of world class quality. Towards this goal, we are willing to work with advertising agencies, the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN and other stakeholders to ensure that we exceed the results of 2009 with the Young Lions Competitions.
The government has shown interest in the Festival as the honourable Minister of Information and Communications was represented at the Festival by the Registrar of APCON, Alhaji Bello Kankarofi, accompanied by the Director of Protocol and Public Enlightenment in the Federal Ministry of Information and Communications, Mrs. Nancy Oghenekaro. It goes without saying that they will make a stronger presence in 2010 because, as you know, Cannes Lions is very addictive and like the Jaguar, it’s “once seen, forever smitten”.
The point is, even if you’re better qualified, you need to be part in a competition first to win. It’s strange to expect to win, when you’re not even listed as a competitor or to accuse jury members of being biased against you when they don’t even know you. That is exactly the way I feel about those debates.
This year Nigeria entered 3 materials in the film category and this is a great improvement from the zero record of 2008. In this category the total entries received was 3,453 and only 261 entries made the short list. We don’t need to be statisticians to know that assuming all the entries were of equal strength (after all they’ve all come for world championship) the chance of a Nigerian material making the shortlist was very slim. Compare Nigeria’s total of 3 entries to South Africa’s 732 entries.
Success is by strategy and hard work. I think we’ve done enough of the talking. It’s time to go to work. 2010 is already around the corner. Let’s go back to our various agencies and offices and develop ideas to solve the numerous social and business challenges that we have in our society today. And we have more than a fair share, really. It is in doing this that we can excel not only at Cannes, but as a nation. Everybody can recognize a great idea. It may be dressed in, but definitely not masked by colour, culture or language - and this is what Cannes Lions is all about.
Above winning awards, Cannes Lions is a forum for learning from the masters of the industry. Cannes Lions 2009 featured 50 seminars and 20 workshops anchored by great names from around the world including. Even the presentations of the winning materials were case studies on how specific problems have been successfully managed in different parts of the world. A good example is the Beacon Communications, Tokyo entry ‘Yubari’ to promote the Yubari Resort. This is their story.
In 2007, Yubari City in Hokkaido, Japan, went bankrupt with a debt of $353 million. Beacon Communications, Tokyo was hired to promote Yubari, reenergize its citizens, and help them pay off the dept. After a detailed study of the city, they realized that Yubari recorded the lowest rate of divorce in the whole of Japan and built their PR strategy around this subtle finding. Based on this they generated the idea, ‘Yubari, no money but love.’ This became a very successful campaign that helped Yubari City to come out of debt. This campaign did not only solve a real problem, it went on to win a Grand Prix. So, it’s really not just about awards. It’s about providing quality solutions to real challenges. The awards are to celebrate these great creative ideas and honour the people behind them.
We have placed top priority on learning and equipping the next generation. The Young Lions Competitions and the Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy provide us with the opportunity to achieve this. This year Nigeria presented 6 youths at the event. Two of them participated in the highly demanded Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy, which is a one week intensive training programme for international students who intend to practice advertising on graduation.
As a new introduction this year to our selection process for the Nigeria Roger Hatchuel Lions Academy delegate, we hold seminars for all the attendees before they go through the test administered by APCON. The reason for this is so that those who will not go on to attend the Festival in France would have learnt a lot from some of the best industry figures in Nigeria. In 2010, we will further improve on this idea by holding a full one-week residential course for the students from all over the country to prepare them for the industry and also to select our special delegate to Cannes Lions 2010.
Our strategy is to cause a turnaround in the industry by continually exposing as many youths as possible to the Festival, so that we can have such a large pool of young Nigerian creatives who will not be satisfied with anything but work of world class quality. Towards this goal, we are willing to work with advertising agencies, the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN and other stakeholders to ensure that we exceed the results of 2009 with the Young Lions Competitions.
The government has shown interest in the Festival as the honourable Minister of Information and Communications was represented at the Festival by the Registrar of APCON, Alhaji Bello Kankarofi, accompanied by the Director of Protocol and Public Enlightenment in the Federal Ministry of Information and Communications, Mrs. Nancy Oghenekaro. It goes without saying that they will make a stronger presence in 2010 because, as you know, Cannes Lions is very addictive and like the Jaguar, it’s “once seen, forever smitten”.
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