Interestingly, the Special Creative Safari event organised by Noah’s Ark to mark the 10th anniversary celebration of the creative agency that held over the weekend, in Lagos, afforded Thomas Kolster, the ‘inventor’ of the term, to further espouse his argument on how a good advertising (goodvertising) could be used to unlock the potential of the advertising industry all over the globe.
Kolster, the author of the best-selling advertising book, ‘Goodvertising: Creative Advertising That Cares,’ had argued at the event witnessed by stakeholders in the nation’s integrated marketing communications industry, that advertising should go beyond being seen as purely profit-making.
For him, it should be used by a brand to earn the trust and loyalty of its consumers, which, he argued, would automatically impact the bottom-lines of such brand.
This, the founder of the creative agency, Inkognito, believes can be achieved by ensuring that such advertisements are value-adding to the consumers, in contrast to the present narratives that in most cases fail to take the needs and concerns of such consumers into consideration.
“For instance, many of our campaign narratives are all about consumption, happy families and other issues that do not really add value to the lives of the audience. They are different from what the audience wants. We, most of the time, spend time working on briefs that do not flow with the audience, and this does not translate to good advertising since obvious consumers’ concerns are not being addressed,” he argued.
He, therefore, argued that for an advertisement to be seen as value-adding, brands must take into cognisance factors such as urbanization, climate change demographic change, economic shift and digitalisation; since they go a long way in shaping the consumers’ perspective of a brand.
“For instance, as brand custodians, we need to know how some of these factors affect our businesses or brands. Without knowing this, there is no way we’ll be able to come up with a good advertising that will surely address the needs of the audience,” he added.
Kolster, however, believes in the immensity of the power of a good advertising, while charging brand custodians on the need to hone their skills to enable them to use such powers to sway the audience to their side.
While harping on the imperative of a good advertising, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Noah’s Ark, Mr Lanre Adisa identified paucity of talents as a major challenge presently confronting the nation’s creative industry.
“It’s not that there are no creative talents out there, but the fact remains that they are not even looking in our direction. It is not that we are bereft of ideas, but the challenge is that the industry, for now, is not attracting those talents,” he stated.
The Noah’s Ark boss, however, explained that the agency’s decision to commence its ‘Arknimal’ Farm Project was aimed at addressing this issue; since the initiative, he argued, is designed to discover and train such talents.
Adisa also decried the tendency of some multinationals to always lower the standards, while speaking to the Nigerian audience, describing this as not helping the cause of ‘goodvertising’ in the country.
In his remarks, the Chief Marketing Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Ahmad Mokles defined brand essence as the ability of such brand to deliver on its promise to the consumers.
He expressed the belief that for advertising to fully resonate with the audience, the brand custodian must fully understand the target consumer to enable such brand come up with good communications that would help the cause of the brand.
and then