Entertainment background helped establish present corporate communication career — Keni Akintoye of Twin-x

Keni Akintoye is one half of the Twin-X group that rocked the music scene in the late 90s and early 2000s. They took a break from music to pursue corporate certifications and careers since then. ROTIMI IGE caught up with Akintoye recently and presents excerpts of the interaction.

You and your twin were a popular music group then before you both took a break, what do you do now?

I’m a communication and media practitioner with vast experience in digital media and marketing, PR and content development. I have moved around a bit, working with different organisations across different sectors like broadcasting, telecom, construction, food and agriculture, technology, finance, entertainment, development and more. I currently lead a young and dynamic team at KTC media as lead strategist.

What stands you out as an expert in communications?

I think it has to do with the philosophy of my practice. I believe a communication solution should never ignore the fact that it’s a social science.

Trust is everything you want and word of mouth, whether online or offline, remains highly important despite the rise of digital marketing and targeted advertising. So, I always believe it’s not enough to have digital expertise, you need to understand the identity of your brand, the emotions of the target and find that sweet spot where they meet.

One of my approaches to getting the job done in brand communication across sectors is building relatability, believability and talkworthiness into the narratives.  Whether we are designing a full brand marketing campaign or handling PR, advertising and video marketing or we are implementing a CSR drive and development communication projects, we try to infuse an element of storytelling.

Storytelling is a beauty when it is relatable and, in some cases, dramatic, because it activates more areas of the brain and gets your audience to experience you in their own realities.

There is also the factual content that should appeal to emotions like fear, anger, happiness or human senses of priority, vanity, sexuality and many more.  Our aim across both approaches is to inspire and not to sell. Think about how memorable words are when they touch on fundamental requirements such as safety, love, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.

We promise our clients that the aim is not to make them just a popular brand but to be the preferred one. With our balanced deployment of data-reliant strategies, digital solutions, creative ideas, and storytelling, I call what we do a blissful marriage of the psychology and technology of communications.

So, how has the pandemic affected your business and how are you dealing with what seems like a downturn in the marketing communications industry?

We faced our fair share of the negatives. Forex affected projects execution, some clients abandoned projects, some started owing, the ones who always owed became unapologetic. COVID-19 pretty much became the easy excuse for hitherto unacceptable practices. I guess it’s the same story for many professionals and businesses.

Some things also didn’t change for us though. For example, before the pandemic, my team was already operating the remote working structure and we had been able to convince a good number of our clients by getting the job done. A lot of companies needed our digital solutions during that 2020 lockdown and somehow, they trust us more for our experience in the new normal.

However, one of the challenges I consider quite damaging is the difficulty for businesses to maintain their shape and structure in the face of difficulties. You have to give it to the few companies that have managed not to downsize. It’s one of the reasons I like to advise entrepreneurs, especially our clients that you’re better off as a small-looking but structured and truly growing organisation than to present yourself as that big company with all the aesthetics but lackS an operational structure or defined processes that will help you grow.

From keeping records of finances to legal, regulatory compliances, businesses cannot afford to take chances as you do not know what form that big opportunity or the hammer would take. Affordability of some of these solutions is sometimes the problem too but many of them have been calibrated into web-based apps and plugins.

There is something exciting about your background; the fact that you started out as a recording artiste.

Yes, being one half of Twin-X, the singing twin was one of the most fast-paced and exciting times in my life. My twin brother and I made some good music and built an amazing fanbase for Twin-X across the world. It’s a thing of joy when we meet people at home and abroad telling us how our music impacted their lives at a time when almost everyone was desperate to join the bandwagon of music with less content.

Sometimes I wish that we could still make out the time to entertain our fans and give them some of that soulful Afro highlife fusion that brought us fame. But my twin brother and I have similar career stories. TY is also currently a management consultant offering solutions in project management, output driven leadership, product development and creative management across the public and private sector. It is no longer easy to come together with the consistency that music demands but I must say we thoroughly enjoyed our active years and you never can tell, we might just make something happen in the studio soon.

How did you make that transition from being Twin-X, a popular recording artiste into brand communications?

You know, I never believed that music would be an excuse for me not to excel in other areas of competence, especially if I’m not deviating from expressing that intrinsic creativity. I knew quite early that my artistic gifts and creativity were not only an indication of an artistic career path but an indication that I have a mind that can innovate and provide original solutions. So, think about your gifts not just as a verb but also as an adverb. You can achieve success in many technical or mechanical fields if you approach them creatively.

So, the transition was quite seamless because I chose to see it as a familiar terrain. My journey into media and communications started while Twin-X was still very active on stage. A lot of people did not know that while Tywo and I were busy touring, we were also schooling to get a degree, and we had started building that alternative life by interning in an advertising firm in Lagos.

By 2006, we had started our own hustle as a company. With those dreadlocks, we were knocking big doors, making our presentations and winning brand communication jobs ranging from concept development to events and brand activations. We had O’net telecoms as one of our clients at a time.  As many career coaches will say, it’s smarter to make a conceptual development of our talents instead of the mechanical development of the talents which will put you in that ‘artiste’ box.

How does being Twin-X affect your current profession as a communication consultant?

I have some funny stories to tell in that regard. I think it’s both ways. There are times that being the well-loved Twin-X has opened doors for me and there are times that it becomes the distraction and people can’t separate the unimpressive image of a Nigerian entertainer that they have from that of a professional doing his job.

I once led my team to a presentation at the office of a commissioner in one of the South-West states and after all my analysis, projections, show of capacity and the applause, all he said was “where is your brother? Why are you people no longer singing?” You want to ask yourself if you had not wasted the whole time talking. Was he even listening to me at all or he was just singing ‘Oluorun ma pa mother mi lekun’ in his head? I try to separate the two identities and let my work speak for me. So far, that approach has worked and yes, the commissioner’s episode wasn’t a bad one.

But he was right. For a rising music brand, you have been away from music for too long, Does that mean you find the media and communication practice more fulfilling? Why the long hiatus?

This is quite a unique story and one totally not planned to be this long also. Twin-X had just returned from a successful tour of the United States and on getting home, we decided that we needed to return to school for postgraduate studies.

The decision was logical at the time because our venture into the business side of entertainment and media had shown the need to further back our talents with training.

Once I finished at the Pan-Atlantic University, where I studied Creative and Digital Media, I joined Jungle Filmworks as a post-graduate intern having majored in visual communication. From working on some of Nigeria’s biggest reality shows at the time, like Gulder Ultimate Search, MaltinaDanceAll and many more, I went on to work with many other organisations from consulting, to PR, film, broadcasting, and digital media.

I just kept going deeper as I enjoyed the idea of birthing ideas and breathing life into them. It gives me almost the same kind of joy I got from writing songs and making them into a record.In few years, I had started my Masters in Communications Studies, graduated and my skills became what different companies and international organisations needed.

Do you still get involved in entertainment?

Oh yes! So, a lot of my works are entertainment-related as you know it’s a great tool for effective brand communication. The growth of content production in influencer marketing tells the story very well. Don’t forget my media background is in advertising and content development.

In fact, I wrote and directed my first film in 2012 – a historic documentary chronicling the 60-year history of Nigeria at the Olympic Games. The film was screened at special events of the London 2012 Olympics, earning me appreciable local and international recognition, particularly from the Nigerian government. So, as a storyteller, I cannot separate my passion for arts and entertainment from my job in media and communications. I think it is one of the edges I have. I have since written and produced more documentaries, TV shows, and executive produced some movies too. But if what you mean to ask is if I still get to step out as an entertainer, I will say the closest to that, these days is when I anchor events or sing to my wife and kids.

What does the future hold?

We are launching a number of fresh exciting projects in the area of brand content and entertainment as well. We agree that content is the new oil. A lot of people say content is king, but we say distribution is the kingmaker. So, we will be paying a lot of attention to that.

Personally, I want to be a top player in corporate Africa leveraging the dynamic marriage of content, data, technology and media network as tools to deliver affordable communications and marketing solutions that will grow a new generation of businesses across the continent. When our clients tell their Forbes, TIME success stories, we want to feature prominently as key facilitators of those successes.

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