‘Nigeria’s creative industry growing, but’…

The Managing  Director of Chini Productions and  representatives of the annual global creativity award, Cannes Festival, in Nigeria, Mr Nnamdi Ndu, has  argued that though  the nation’s creative industry had recorded some growth in the past one decade,  such growth are, however, not   strong enough to make the required impact on the global stage.

Making this observation recently in Lagos, while announcing the introduction of the New Pitcher Awards, one  of the programmes of the Creativity Week, Ndu, argued that though  advertising agencies in this part of the globe, still find it difficult  making an appreciable impact on the global stage, he  however, described the situation  as a vast improvement on what obtained about ten years ago, when he started his outfit.

“When we started about ten years ago, no Nigerian agency had even won an award on the global stage, despite being involved in  advertising for over 70 years. that was why we adopted the Brazilian approach of training these young guys, taking them to Cannes and got them fire up.

“Now we are gradually having some agencies, such as the Noah’s Ark, that will not accept the status quo. And we are beginning to experience some change, though this is rather slow,” he stated.

He described  the newly introduced Pitcher Award as long awaited since it would go a long way in complementing  all the other programmes of the Creativity Week such as the Young Lions

Competitions, Future Creative Leaders Academy, the Miami Ad School Scholarship Competition and the Creativity Week Expo and Seminars.

Ndu, explained that the Pitcher Award is aimed at celebrating and honouring  works from West and Central  Africa, as well as the people behind them.

He added that  as a way of giving  international visibility to the people, agencies and brands behind  the winning works, his agency had concluded arrangements with Lurzer’s Archive to publish a compilation of winning works in a volume that will be distributed globally.

“At Cannes, we will present a special Pitcher Awards publication, featuring a compilation of all the winning works to the over 16,000 delegates from around the globe,  attending the creative festival,” he stated.