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”.
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