Influencers part of diversity in advertising industry—Vee69 boss

Watching trends in the Nigerian marketing communications industry over the years, Florence Achado, the managing director of Vee69, shares her insight on how advertising shapes society

Excerpts

What’s your broad view of the trend in advertising industry in Nigeria in the last 10 years?

Over the years, the media has offered a wide range of industries some sort of leverage, and advertising is no exemption. Apart from innovation in print and electronic media that drives marketing communications, tech platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, You-Tube. With all their artificial intelligence, have also changed the way advertisers and consumers interface. We have also witnessed the advent of influencers. The Covid-19 pandemic, too, in the last three years. Remote working, consumers migrating online as a result of social distancing, and all that, have since forced brands to focus more on digital marketing communications.

Besides creating a consumerist society, how else, in your view, has advertising shaped Nigeria?

Like most mass-mediated industries, advertising has a strong impact on society—the way the media does, for instance. It’s not just consumerism alone it creates; advertising creates and shapes values. I’ll give an example, at vee69 we have handled humanitarian responses, campaign on out of school children in Nigeria and a lot more, these are based on patriotism, nation building and unity, it is not selling any consumable rather, it is selling ideas and positive outcomes. I’ll say awareness is such a powerful weapon that changes everything.

What would you say about influencers? Are they stealing your job? 

Talking about influencers…. Like I said before: they are a force. I really do appreciate what they do. It’s part of the diversity that makes us better in the industry.

What was the industry like when you founded Vee69?

A lot has changed over the years. Nigeria’s media space was a couple of years out on the information super highway, and standing right in the thick of social media disruption when we started Vee69 seven years ago. If you remember, the traditional media was losing readership in droves to websites and other web 2.0 platforms then. Starting up a full service advertising agency was no joke in such a disrupted environment. But at Vee69, we live with a purpose, and that purpose lights our path. We survived the test of that time.

Can you look at the trend in advertising education, and compare Nigeria’s standard with where you studied advertising?

While I studied marketing and advertising in Coventry, United Kingdom, I will say that the UK has a large advertising market, however this provides insight to help understand awareness and other forms of engagement

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“We are very resourceful in Nigeria. And I know the curricula, for both academic and professional qualifications, are up to the mark.  I can tell that much because I’m a full member of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON)

Display of affluence in ads and through channels advertising uses is stimulating get-rich vices in Nigerian youth. What’s your take?

I don’t agree to that. We’re very careful about what content Vee69 sends out, though. Even at that…. It’s about choices. Everyone is responsible for who they become.  When you appreciate what you have, and what you are on the inside, no display of affluence can take you out of yourself.