By Kola Oyeyemi
I will like to take us through what I call some global views about the relationship between corporates and entertainment.
The brand I will like to talk about here is a brand that is called Cadbury. I happen to have worked for Cadbury back in the days. Cadbury was a sponsor of the Olympics of last year, the London 2012. And they have a track record of supporting major sporting events Including the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Commonwealth game in Manchester in 2002 and Melbourne in 2006.
When they got the bid for the 2012 Olympics, they got designated as the official confectionary and ice-cream support of London 2012. Interestingly, even though they got the right to supply all of the confectionary, cakes and what have you at that tournament, some people were not happy with them for what they did and the reason is that, they felt it was a very controversial idea. The game was meant to look at people’s health and well-being and now you are asking people consume chocolate and candy during the Olympic Games. They felt it was a bit of a contradiction.
But what then happened was this: between the brand and the community, some things happened during that sponsorship. One, Cadbury as a brand benefitted. They had a Facebook page which had about 245, 000 fans and grew by 20 per cent. During that period it added 25,000 followers. The Google plus account add about 200, 000 new fans during the games, breaking the two million mark. The chart shows a sharp growth over the seventeen days of the games and they got up to 7.5million people in that area. When it came to the brand volume sales grew.
Now, I’m saying all of this to prepare a background to what we are going to talk about very soon. Now look at Mercedes Benz and fashion. We know that Mercedes who makes a lot of cars has built a lot of attention to fashion globally and they have a major fashion that they support in New York; the New York Fashion Week. And what happens in there is that quite a lot of things happen around that fashion show they do and I will show us a couple of things that happen.
Quite a lot of things happen within that period. The number one thing that you need to note is this: even though New York is the fashion capital of the world as said, the kind of economic buoyancy that comes around New York, around this period when they hold this fashion week is humongous and I will show you some very interesting figures as we go by.
Look at these figures. Roughly about 232,000 people attend this event yearly, now that’s a huge number for a fashion show, and on the heels of that you find that about 900 companies in the fashion business create their headquarters around that particular event in New York. About $865million is the annual economic impacts from research that occurs because of the Mercedes Benz sponsored fashion week In New York. About 232,000 people there, $98billion is what that industry is worth. $6billion is what is spent on hotels around the period this fashion week occurs and what are we talking about here, $9million on restaurants, people have to feed during the event and we have a lot of revenues that happen.
That is looking at New York and London, two big capitals of the world.
Locally, what has happened within the space of the ‘corporate’ intervening or having a hand shake with the entertainment industry. For instance, we have for MTN, we are proud to talk about the MTN Project Fame. It is a music talent show that brings in rookies and trains them to become world class stars. It is a reality show that takes about 15 to 18 young people, put them in a house, groom them, train them on voice, performances and dances and all of that so that they will become international stars. We have created the opportunity for them to actually be seen on TV and be followed, voted for by people. We have great artistes like Iyanya, Chidinma, we have Praiz who have become phenomena. Iyanya just had the highest number of music download in Africa a few days back and he is a product of Project Fame which I am proud about.
We also have MTN football scholars which is where we groom young football talents. It started in 2009. Nigeria is a country that loves football. You can almost say we worship soccer. But the issue is, if you look back in time, a whole lot of our soccer stars who made it in life, after the exhibition of their active soccer playing years what happens to them? They didn’t take education along with their soccer career. So the intention of MTN Football Scholar is how to combine talent and intellectual ability, schooling and education with soccer talent and then expose them to international soccer schools and education abroad. And we have a total of four students who are currently studying in the U.S. and we have eight that we are preparing their document to go.
What about fashion? We are at the Lagos Fashion Week where we try to ensure that we bring what they operate in New York down here. We have people who win young fashion designer of the year, or young creative entrepreneur of the year, young model of the year. It is also an opportunity to recruit rookies, people who never had the opportunity to get to that platform to ensure that they get into the mainstream where they can own their space and be celebrated as stars. And we have the master class for the young people to become professionals who can hold their own thing and do great in the fashion industry.
We have the national platform runway that has attracted a lot of people in the fashion industry. The event is held at the Expo Hall of the Eko Hotel and Suites, you will find out a whole lot of people from all around the world come to grace the event. It also gives people the opportunity to mingle locally and internationally with people who matter most in the fashion industry.
Now I want to talk about another example here in Nigeria. Talking about the Star Mega Jam which is an annual musical concert organised by Nigerian Breweries. We have seen a whole lot of international music stars coming to play at the event. But I am coming to something on this. And we have Star Trek which is Nigeria’s biggest musical tour which takes A- list artistes around the corners of the country. There is one more thing from Nigeria Breweries, the Star Quest which is where they also look for rookies, groom them and expose them internationally.
The reason why I brought all this up is that I want to talk about what strategy is involved in this and I will be raising issues as I go by. We have seen what happened with Mercedes and Cadbury. We have seen the interaction between the brands and entertainment, whether it is fashion, music or sport. When you look at those examples, you ask yourself what strategy drove the involvement of the brands, because that is really where you will see whether the relationship is parasitic or symbiotic.
For us at MTN we have this strategy which is like a pyramid in nature. At the base is what we call the developmental. Find them, groom them, empower them and release them. That’s the base. We give them a platform. When you look at Project Fame and the Football Scholars; they are both developmental processes.
And in the middle is where we give them National and international platform to perform in concerts where you have international artistes which eliminates the issues of inferiority complex. On top of these we have the reward and recognition which is a total package for us. The reason why we are still with the HipHop World award is not accidental. When you check what we do everything falls in strategy. We develop you at the grass root, give you a platform, expose you so that you can aspire to something in the industry. That is the strategy that drives us and that is the strategy we have used in the entertainment industry.
Now what is interesting here is, if you look at Nigerian Breweries also, and you find out what they have done with Star Trek, Star Quest and Star Mega Jam. It follows the same principle, at the base is the developmental, at the middle is the national platform with Star Trek and on top, even though they do not have an award like we do, they have a Star Mega Jam which gives them an international platform, that is where there is a rubbing of shoulder between local and international stars.
Why am I saying all this? These things are not accidental. There is a process and the process has different levels of impacts. What I have here is what I call the cycle of impact. The cycle of impact looks at the brand from the inside then it goes out to the customer who we are really putting up this kind of events for within the entertainment industry and then it goes to the category of the field or industry you are in.
No brand is a charity and if you think it’s a charity then you have to think again. When a brand engages in anything, they try to see what value is coming to them either in direct sales benefit or visibility and attractiveness of association. Something of value must come back to the brand and if something of value doesn’t come back to the brand, the brand will not pay. And when we are talking about engaging with the entertainment industry for brands we need to look from that perspective
The second point is what happens to the customer. I am not putting up a show because of me, I am putting up a show because of my target audience. Now what am I offering them? Am I offering them good fun, good entertainment real excitement into some activities or some leisure and pleasures? Those are the things we need to measure between brands and its engagement with whatever activities you are talking about.
Now leave the brand scope and go to the area of category. Within that category what kind of things have I done? Have I increased the competitiveness within that environment? Am I heating up the polity? Am I making that area more exciting than it has to be? Have I risen the power of performance with that cycle that if there is a competitor in that environment who has seen what I have done will they say I need to go back to the war room and rethink so that I can come back and do something exciting?
You create a higher level of competitiveness within that industry category. That is more important when you consider an engagement between a brand and entertainment. And on top of this, is where is the financial, human infrastructural impacts. If you invest in a sector, industry what impacts does it have on the larger economy? We saw some number in the morning when the DG spoke about the impacts of the movie industry as a ratio over the GDP in America and look that the entire country in Nigeria where there’s no difference between what the movie industry has impacted on the entire population in America and what we have in our entire economy here which is so sad.
What we are saying is that we don’t look at it from one dimension.
Until we look at the entire spectrum we can never tell the real value and build an industry where it becomes really symbiotic.
Currently I have had a couple of cool stuff and have a few chat on proposals and issues. We have pressure currently in the industries among brands. That is the case we are right now globally. I have been to conferences where people are asking questions; what are the ROO and ROI on engagement between brands and entertainment? I mean sport, fashion and music. They are asking questions globally not in Nigeria alone. We call it sponsorship. But people are saying of all the sponsorship, what are the ROO and ROI.
Models are being developed, we really need to know what’s happening.
Worsening the scenario is that everybody is cutting back. When you bring a proposal and you tell me it will create affinity, it will bring about brand equity, The CFO looks at you and just tells you that you are just speaking grammar. Show me the money. What is it going to bring back. You say no you don’t understand, he tells you, If I buy X naira worth of raw material, it will produce Y cartons of products and I can sell it for Y Naira. Can I see the money your proposal is going to generate? He cannot tell you it will generate XYZ. He will just tell you brand equity, brand affinity and marketing people are wonderful in speaking those good English. Affinity, association and all of that, monetize it for me, show me the money. You need to sit down together and say guys before we used to talk affinity, talk equity, we need to see how you can monetize it. We need to show them there is money in that, either short term, medium term or long term. That is when we put business into entertainment
The next point is the increasing need for professionalism within that environment. A lot of times, brand managers will say ‘oh it’s a nice proposal, nice evaluating properties’. We need to get more professional about this. It is a lazy way of evaluating properties. When you know that the CFO will challenge you and will tell you show me the money, then you are able to speak in a very convincing manner professionally about whether you should get involved in entertainment or get out of entertainment.
Quickly, I will like to say some things and I hope I won’t ruffle feathers a bit. I would like to talk about the business of branding and branding of business. What I am saying here this afternoon is that in the entertainment industry in Nigeria we have done the first very well. Brand entertainers, brand musicians, brand musicians, brand movies to make it look excellent. But I think we are not doing so well in terms of branding of business.
What do I mean about branding of business? You can get a great artist to design fantastic logos for you and give you some colours which your brands must be known with, but where we are failing repeatedly is after he has given those exciting stuffs, what do I do on the daily basis, what kind of contract do I get into, the kind of relationship I keep and the kind of lifestyle I live. How does it help me live that brand or does it destroy the brand?
We did well with the first but I am not sure if we are doing well with the second. We seem to know the business of entertainment judging from everything that has been said today. We need to learn the business in entertainment.
We have creative and intelligent people, but the question is do we know the business in entertainment? If you don’t know the business of entertainment you will short change yourself and people will use your creative output and pay you so little for all your efforts because you do not know the business in entertainment. Now in Nigeria we have made efforts in doing all these, whether we have done a good job I am not sure but I will talk about this in a few seconds.
In my young life I have seen proposals, wonderful proposals and one of the things I saw in those proposals is what I call the ‘waka pass’ syndrome. I got a proposal to spend over N200 million and the proposal was stating that for spending N200 million you will get brand mention, we will put your logo and you will get visibility, and I said visi- what? I am the most visible brand. What added value are you giving me beyond just visibility? I got a movie proposal that says when the camera turns we have your billboard and then it premieres or we will shoot in front of your office. I call all of these waka pass.
You say you are doing branding entertainment, what you are doing is that you want me to pay for a vehicle and be a passenger and that will be insanity of the highest order especially because I am not a desperate brand. And for desperate brands they may do that but you are just wasting your time because the day the managers of those brands know better they will stop talking to you.
Next point, brand visibility. I just mentioned it someone said he will give me visibility and I said, so what? But right now I say to someone that when you put my logo on your product, you should actually pay me because I am a bigger than you. I should get some revenue from it instead of you asking me for money.
And the premieres, I have seen proposals of premieres where my brand is not interwoven with the story, my brand is not integral to the movie and you say I should come sponsor the premiere. And after I have sponsored the premiere what happens to my brand? Nothing. And that is after I have spent huge millions of naira. A CFO will look at me and say what have you gotten from that. And that is why your proposals will come back from the brand manager and get a no. But if you can do branding estimates excellently well you will discover it will be very difficult for me to say a no to your proposals because I know that it is not a waka pass.
I close, parasitic relationship? May be not, but there’s a possibility.
I have used two brands as examples. I have said we will invest in the industry. We won’t wait for you to struggle like M.I was lamenting in the morning about artistes struggling alone and when they are made, the brands come to identify with them.
We will invest in you when you are not yet discovered, and give you a platform to grow, because we feel it should be a partnership. We do not wait until you are made before we interact with you we would rather walk with you through the time when you are not known to the time you are known.
Some brands may do that, I mean being parasitic, but I do not think that big brands who are active in entertainment today have that mind-set. And that’s why I am saying may be not but there’s a possibility.
Symbiosis, I said may be, but it could be better. Now the only way it could be better that it would not be parasitic or destroy the industry is if the industry itself understands the business in entertainment and not just the business of entertainment.
- Kola Oyeyemi, GM Consumer Marketing, MTN Nigeria.
This speech was delivered at the inaugural edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference held on Friday, April 26, 2013 at the Grand Ball Room of the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos Nigeria.
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