If you have to waste money, do it with some panache!

Some of us, if not the majority of the 15 million denizens of the great Nigerian state of Lagos and some sizable number of the rest 110 million people spread across the great African country, FULL of evil potential than the good one, must have been mistreated to the parody of reality TV shows called 'star quest'.

i feel pity for lagosians because the advantage they possess is also their Achilles heel. Lagosians, because of their relative prosperity, have more than 60% of homes being able to afford a TV set or two. {That's a huge leap for Lagos-mankind as other homes across Naija are much less fortunate, courtesy of a combination of thieving politicians, bad policies and absolute ignorance}. It means Lagosians, because of the dearth of good programmes on their miserable TVs, 70% of which are second generation junks filtering through our ports at the rate it takes to blink, are forced to watch whatever could be dumped on them. After all, aren't we supposed to be thankful for our existence, as bros Aremu would have us think?

Among such programmes are the reality TV shows fast mushrooming in annoying nuumers. Chief among the poorest of them is the 'star quest' show sponsored by Nigeria's deep-pocketed brewery that's claiming to be a world class player. Common marketing sense demands that your associations be as good as the product you offer.

First, the concept of a reality TV show based on the premise of discovering a great band is a blatant COPY. Not that people all over the world don't copy ideas, but i feel that if you steal an idea, you owe the owner of the idea the decency of respectable execution.

'Star Quest' is a copy of P.Diddy's {Sean Puffy Combs} hugely popular reality TV show in America, done in collaboration with MTV. Everything about it was superbly done to good taste. Before they started combing America for talents, they hired producers, arrangers, voice trainers, writers, e.t.c to take the game to another level. There were other notable musicians, afficionados, and a full compliment of session men {professional instrumentalists} who backed up the budding talents being sourced at the REGIONAL casting level.

When that was done, they picked talented individuals and gave them opportunity to produce their own songs, working with established professionals to make it acceptable to Hollywood standard. All the while, world-class logistics was provided for the entrants, players and everyone connected to the show. The ambience and rehearsal places were of great standard.

The main man of 'Bad Boy Entertainment', P.Diddy, with his larger than life personality, even when the reality TV show became a huge success, after putting together the winning band, which while still on the show, released a debut album which have sold over 800,000 copies so far, disbanded the team because he felt they've not paid enough attention to professionalism.

Hear him: “The moral of the story is you have to take advantage of your opportunities and you have to give love to your craft,'' he told the Associated Press. “If you don't, you can achieve a dream, but it can also be dissolved.”
On Thursday, the mogul said that he broke the group apart because he was weary of the bickering, fighting and lackadaisical attitude towards their music.
“Initially my goal with Da Band was to make sure the world saw realistically how serious Hip-Hop was. So at times it was kind of embarrassing to me the way they were portraying themselves, not taking it as serious as most artists take this art form,” he said.
“The venture with Da Band was successful because it had the TV TV backing. But at the end of the day, it's not worth me getting money for something I think misrepresents what Bad Boy and Hip-Hop is about.''

The group sold an impressive 800,000 on their first musical outing, Too Hot For TV, but there will be no sophomore album from Da Band. Some shows featured a record number of bleeped curse words, but the show frequently dominated its nightly time slot.

The take-out for me here is, P.DIDDY is careful about his brand as a serious music production company with values for hardwork, comportment and ingenuity. On the contrary, 'Star Quest' stole a wonderful idea blatantly and made a sorry mess of it. The brand image will definitely suffer because the execution of the idea is unrepentantly shoddy and crass.

Or how do you view those groups chosen in an unprofessional manner, left to their own whims and caprice on music, without professional guidance and trying so hard to re-arrange popular music from legends like Majek Fashek but ending up mutilating them, ever come up with their own hit song to make Alaba Chinese offer to cut their CDs?

i beg, make this Nigerian brewery no dey disgrace us like their brothers in Politics in Abuja or their cousins in NEPA or is PHCN?! Methinks NBL and an agency like Lintas need to invest in people who could project our image, not rush to be part of the craze to own a reality TV show in Nigeria! Enough of rubbish on our screens. No wonder with the proliferation of new TV stations locally, DSTV is still selling like hotcake, sorry, like fake CDs.

Preying on the vulnerability of Naija

It doesn't bother me that African leaders, especially Nigeria's leaders have made the critical issue of politics a zero sum game, where all sorts of absurdities are crowned and eagerly celebrated. Their ineptitude and crass irresponsibility have been well documented by well-known people from different classes, race, education, inclination and pedigree.

But to have corporate bodies, who are mostly foreign, feeding off this mess to enrich and even build brand equity on that smacks of irresponsibility of the first order

While waiting in line to cut my hair at a barber's shop i had traversed almost 5 miles to come, just because electricity supply to the entire Nigerian nation-state have been decimated by massive distruption to the gas supply lines by the rebels in the Niger Delta, i watched with dismay, on the second-hand TV at the shop how multinationals are disparaging honest Nigerians who arguably have the best work ethics in the world.

First was an ad by Guiness which showed a supposedly 'cool' guy, at a Guiness party, displaying insipid ingenuity by organizing several taxi cabs to form a circle, open their doors, put on their headlights and open their doors so that the conbination of those car's sound stereo could provide music, cut off by a distruption in public power supply.

i'm sure the executives at Guiness and their ad agency cronies would have patted themselves in the back for this crap of an idea. how could you turn the challenge of a nation you're making billions of Dollars in into a shameful celebration? Is that hare-brained response of arranging music from taxi cabs a sensible thing to do assuming we're actually faced with that situation? I think a brand that prides itself as a global brand should be able to pay for better ideas than rank themselves alongside such mediocre proposition.

Another one that struck me is the TV event called Big Brother Nigeria. I think this reality TV idea is cool. What i can't understand is the choice of one of the main sponsors which turned out to be a generator company with the endline that says : Big Brother Nigeria....powered by Mikano.

On the surface, it looks good. But if you live in a country where generator companies have been in the spot-light for stalling the bid of well meaning governments, individual and corporate concerns to make the public power corporation work, you'll see that it's all balderdash. For a reality TV that depends on mass viewership to shore up it's advertising ratings so it can charge more money per spot to be sponsored by a private company that thrives on the somewhat 'assisted' failing of the national power supply company leaves much to be desired.

While i'm not holding brief for the kleptomaniacs called politicians and policy makers in my country, who daily disgrace us before the whole wide world with their satanic posturings and activities, I think the least that companies who make money from her should do is to rape and tell. That's absurd. That's a disrespect to millions of honest, hardworking Nigerians who daily spend a fortune on irreverent foreign and local corporations.

Or what do you think?

love creative work 'coz it lets me be me. no frills  

at work in leo-burnett 

launched the veego prepaid brand for vmobile 

me 

hi Guys!

welcome to my blog site! i'm a young Nigerian professional working with a global integrated marketing communications firm here in Lagos. i have a world view of people, events and places and i've got opinion to share on a variety of topics ranging from globalization, to western hypocrisy, to ineptitude of African leaders, to the bullish corruption in top places in Nigeria, fondly called Naija, to bright ideas and spirituality of man.

i will be sharing my thoughts with you here from time to time and comment on raging issues as i see fit. Hope you have a good time reading as i'll be giving you some inside working on Nigeria, replete with 90% honest, hardworking people whose image has been tainted by corrupt leaders and conmen, who account for a very negligible number. I will also tell you that so many people outside there are losing a lot of opportunity as they seem not to see anything good with Naija people.

Since my government is yet to wake up to the realities of a modern economy by marketing Nigeria, i would help them out with information that can help.

so long, will be back soon.

jessebay