Clifford Amuzuo
The Founder / Chief Creative Officer, Noah’s Ark Communications Agency, Lanre Adisa has expressed commendations to the class of new generation Nigerian advertising agencies for their creative ingenuity excellent performances which has continued to earned them global recognition at international creativity awards.
The brilliant performance of the agencies, he said, has not only placed the practitioners in positive lime light, it has ultimately positioned Nigeria to global reckoning in international creativity circles.
Appearing as interview guest personality on a television interactive program recently, Adisa, who’s agency Noah’s Ark won laurels at the 2021 edition of the Lorrie’s Global Award, attributed the feat by the new generation agencies to what he termed, the growing dynamism and competitive spirit to benchmark global standards in creativity.
According to the astute advertising industry practitioner, the creative feats are not only to the credit of Nigeria as a country but more importantly to West Africa sub region and Africa in general.
Adisa, while acknowledging the great impacts of the advertising industry leading lights, the likes of Dr Biodun Shobanjo, Cheif Akin Odunsi and Sir Steve Omojafo at lifting the practice and profession in Nigeria noted however that what distinguishes the new generation agencies from their older counterparts was the drive to become more visible on the global stage unlike it was the case years before.
“I think its great for our industry. If there is anything that is actually differentiating our current generation of ad practitioners from those before us is the fact that we have been more visible on the global stage unlike before now”
I recognize and respect the generations before us, and the great achievements of the likes of Biodun Shobanjo, Chief Odunsi, Sir Steve Omojafo, and the rest of them and of course those who came after that, Prima Garnet of this world, SO&Us of this world. But for my generation, those of us who started around 1990, the late 80s and 90s, there wasn’t any particular agency that was representing that generation that I could really look up to and say wao”
“ As a matter of fact, I remember, the cry then used to be about, oh, Nigeria is not here, Nigeria is not there, and I think Cannes has always been the hallmark. Everybody wants to be with the Cannes, but u know, its not about winning the cannes alone, its about been recognized internationally, and I think that’s what we’ve been able to achieve this past decade and some more”
“I think there is a new movement of sort, there’s a new generation of agencies coming up and that is a good thing really. But it doesn’t really help if u are not growing the industry by having new people come on board and that is what we are beginning to see. So the industry is getting better, the practitioners are demanding more themselves”
“We live in a global world where information is free all over the place and people are benchmarking themselves against the very best around. I think that’s what we are beginning to see and we can only hope that we can sustain that”
He expressed regrets that over time Nigeria and indeed West Africa was poorly represented at the global stages of creativity but added that the new generation Nigerian agencies were beginner to fill the gap and to benchmark their East and Southern Africa counterparts in the field.
“ I think in terms of our vision we never saw competition as limited to Nigeria, I mean when u do that u limit your self. Yes our market is Nigeria, our market is Africa and the vision from the beginning for us has always been that, look, we want to be in the league of most successful brand builders out of Africa”
“Africa needs to add its voice to that global conversation and by Africa I mean not just South Africa because over time its always been about South Africa, which is OK, but there are other parts of Africa, especially, west Africa. b Every other part of Africa seems to be relatively well represented, Southern Africa with South Africa and they are doing very well, east Africa we have Kenya coming up, and of course north Africa there is Egypt, there is Tunisia, so west Africa is the one that doesn’t get that kind of recognition and we thought we could do that and with all sense of modesty I think that is been accomplished with every passing year”
