Alpha & Jam: Young OOH Advertising Agency Of The Year

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Samuel Ajiboye, MD, Apha &Jam

For Apha & Jam, 2018 was a year of disruption in the Digital Out-Of-Home subsector in Nigeria. The agency establishing its frontrunner position in the OOH sector as it deploys disruptive innovation in the industry with the launch of the Candle, an innovative smart platform that powers DOOH screens and has the ability to interpret data, converts it to meaningful results like OTS, GRP, Number of Impressions, Unique Reach, Repeat Visit, Campaign Conversion among others.

It is interesting to note that Candle has brought forward the future of DOOH in Africa and the world with its war chest creativity. This innovative technology which is indigenous to Nigeria was conceptualized by young dynamic Nigerian agency Alpha & Jam led by Samuel Ajiboye, its Managing Director.  Candle is also a content creation engine focused on creating out-of-home experiences that engage. It does three basic things. First, it runs on big screens. Secondly, it has its own media player which is a real deal. A media player is what makes it possible to do everything on the Madison.

Candle also interprets data and converts it to meaningful results that make sense to a media buyer like OTS, GRT, number of impressions, among others. The agency leveraged on this digital innovation for brands, agencies and businesses it worked for last year.

It will be recalled that Apha & Jam erected the iconic Madison board, Nigeria’s first fully digital self-intelligence LED screen, which it strategically sited at the Ikoyi Link Bridge connecting High Net worth Individuals, in Ikoyi to the upper middle class in Lekki. The Madison stands proudly in all its 4000 megapixels of glory as the most iconic premium LED screen in Africa. Without mincing word, Madison has taken Digital Out-Of-Home to another level by becoming the first experiential screen that has the capacity of engaging the audience on the go. Another unique feature of Madison is its innovative ‘Eko light,’ that beams its light from the top of the screen, shooting four kilometres of skylight into the night sky making it visible from almost every part of Lagos.

Another important feature of the iconic LED screen is that it is powered by Candle with its self-intelligence ability. The Madison is capable of giving real-time socio-economic audience profiling through its CEGR (Car Economic Grading Ratio) proprietary solution through the use of Candle. The significance of this is to indicates whenever an HNI or a middle-income earner is looking at your ads.

Speaking on the Madison and how the Candle works on a board like Madison, Samuel told Brand Communicator recently as thus, “Scheduling for Candle is cloud-based. You can upload your campaign online and see it go live. What makes monitoring using Candle unique is that, unlike what is commonly used, it captures both the board and the surrounding so you get to see the audience and the screen in real time. You get real-time reports and live feeds of what is going on. The client has access to all these. For instance, you can upload your ad from Korea in Lagos and monitor it from the comfort of your space over there.

“It is a self-service platform that is as easy to run as a Facebook ad. Once you can run a Facebook ad, you can run an ad on the Madison or any board that is powered by the Candle. You can create an account on candle, select the boards you want to run and run your campaign. It is a programmatic platform for all DOOH campaigns. This makes it easy to justify OOH investments and even optimise it. As a screen owner, imagine been able to control your site remotely. Imagine the possibility of turning on or off your screen and generator, gauging fuel, control calibration all from the comfort of your location irrespective of the distance of the site? That is an innovation that comes with Candle,” he explained.

Through the efficacy of the Candle some interesting innovative campaigns were run on the Madison in 2018. To make sure Nigerian football fans do not miss out on  actions at the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup perhaps by virtue of been stuck in the traffic, Coca-Cola, one of the sponsors of the Nigerian team at the mundial covered the matches to the admiration of the football-loving fans.

Strategically engaging the Madison, the cola brand interacted with football fans while keeping them abreast of real time events in Russia, although for technical and regulatory reasons, no board beamed the World Cup live. But unlike other boards that showed scores intermittently, Coca Cola using the Madison, kept people abreast of the development on the pitch in faraway Russia. It showed ball possession, who kicked what, the timing, goals scored, who provided assists, as well as goals scored in real time. In addition, when a player scored a goal, a Coca-Cola moved on the screen and the name of the scorer and the person who assisted was displayed.

The volume of engagement on Madison screen arguably made it the first real time DOOH screen engagement platform in the country. For instance, there were about 3026 cars on the Ikoyi link when Super Eagles’ Victor Moses scored against the Argentina’s Albicelestes in Nigeria’s second group stage match in Russia. The excitement that followed the goal from that location was enough to convince anybody not paying attention to what was going on on Madison that the match was streamed live around the bridge.

The Madison was able to do this thanks to a special component of the Candle called BrandFREEZE. BrandFreeze makes it possible for brands to assemble their number of insertions for the whole day into a single duration and use as a strategic period, perhaps a product launch, it wishes to utilize it. The scheduling of the Candle is dynamic such that you can change timing to suit brand’s needs. The brand can control the number of exposure because, at the end of the day, there is a maximum amount of exposure it can have in a day.

To further engage Nigerian fans during the world cup, the brand deployed the #Shareacokewithoursupereagles campaigns to give fans the platform to show their love and support for the players and the national team. The campaign which ran on the Madison was a real-time Coca-Cola DOOH Instagram feed display that showed in real-time Instagram photos people uploaded with the hashtag. Those images were displayed irrespective of the locations and MADISON upped the ante by bringing fans together to a screen in support of the national team.

In just two hours, without any form of digital promotion, over 400 Instagram uploads in 2hours before Nigeria’s game, were recorded. The board also deployed a match time countdown to further fire up the hype leading to every Nigeria’s game.  The two teams playing against each other are placed next to a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola.

Apart from the Coca Cola campaign, another disruptive campaign Alpha & Jam ran last year was during the Ramadan. At this time, one of the most important times of the day for Muslims is the time for Iftar- the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily fast at sunset. Interestingly, the time for Iftar is not always at 7 o’clock as erroneously believed. It fluctuates. Working collaboratively with the brand, the agency came up with a time content which it displayed on the Madison giving people the exact time for Iftar.

Apha & Jam also ran another campaign on the Moet Grand Day event campaign done in collaboration with Phd Nigeria and beamed on the Madison on June 9, 2018. The Moet Grand Day event is like the biggest premium party in the world. The idea is to celebrate success every hour at an ongoing party in 80 countries of the world. The concept is also to make a toast every hour-to life, success, etc. The brand was looking for how to creatively and dynamically make it possible.

Ajiboye said doing that with a Madison powered Candle was easy. “What we did for the brand was to create a BTL timer where the internet time was fixed, so they can count down to an hour. As the countdown was going on at the various venues of the event, we were counting down at the Madison screen. People got to know there was an ongoing event and that at every hour, a toast was being made.

“This created an effect where people felt they were missing out on something interesting. It was an ad that was dynamically doing something. Interestingly, Nigeria is the fifth countries among the 80 to actually display this on a billboard. It was a great concept planned out with PHD media on how creative the Madison could be put to use.”

The Candle is unique in the sense that it is not exclusive to the Madison alone. It can power other DOOH screens as well.

It is crystal clear that Apha&Jam was able to clinch the 2019 Brandcom Award as Young Out- of-Home Advertising Agency of the Year due to its disruptive innovations. The agency has proved many times that it is not in this industry as a fringe player, but an agency that has the wherewithal to dictate the pace.

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