Current Client: Nike EMEA and Heineken (global)
Born: Ado Ekiti, Nigeria
Worked in: London
What role does innovation play in my marketing strategy today?Nike is an industry leader in communication. Innovation sits at the heart of the way they talk to consumers and helps build advocates for life. My job is to help my clients increase their equity as a brand, and ultimately improve their bottom line. We want to provide service to the consumer and add value to their every day lives. Doing this requires a mix of creative flair underpinned with commercial realities... after all, what use is a neat idea that doesn't shift product or improve brand perceptions?
Name an innovative idea of which you are most proud. At the end of last year, Nike launched the T90 Laser boot. The idea we co-created behind the campaign was ‘Put It Where You Want It' which reinforced the accuracy proposition of the boot. We challenged Nike to put Digital content at the very heart of the campaign — the innovation was in using TV, ambient OOH, Mobile, Print and a targeted Content Distribution strategy to tease Football Obsessed Teens (FOTs — Nike’s target audience) to go Online and view truly entertaining content featuring the Sanchez Boys (of MTV's Dirty Sanchez fame). Players like Wayne Rooney, Gattuso, Malouda and Frings were encouraged to demonstrate their accuracy skills and the features of the boot by punting footballs at the Sanchez Boys in all sorts of erroneous places, literally putting the ball where they wanted it. Users were encouraged to upload their own ‘Put It Where You Want It' clips. work consistently throughout the world.
We also partnered with Nokia to run a pan-European mobile advertising campaign (mobile banners and added value editorial driving users to download the game from Nokia.mobi). In just one month across five European markets, over 200k people downloaded the T90 game.
Why people see you as an innovator? Be innovative or die trying — I love this maxim. But it's the gold standard in visionary thinking and it's the filter that's applied to putting good work out. It sounds fatal but it pretty much mirrors our industry's situation today.
Dictionary definitions of innovation fall short of its real meaning for me… Innovation is fresh thinking that adds value.... value to the brand (awareness, favorability, consideration, equity, sales, CRM database, data and insights into their consumers, etc...) and value to the consumer (making life easier, providing a service, functional tools that augment users' experiences, making the brands' assets easily sharable and accessible, etc...).
Other International Facts: I moved to London at the age of 6. Equipped with only broken English, it wasn't until the age of 7 that I started to speak the language like a London local (with a funny accent, of course). My mother is Greek; my father Egyptian, and up until 3 years ago, I had a collection of 4 passports. Three of which gathered dust for the best part of 20 years, with the Nigerian one being finally revoked on grounds of dual nationality.
After 2 years of study at Guy's Medical School, London, I turned my back on Medicine. I went on to study Maths for 3 years-- (nothing like a bit of calculus to stifle your creativity), which caused me to end up in the media industry. And haven't looked back since. I'm grateful to be working in an industry that is such a fertile ground for creativity and doing things a bit differently.
