Nigeria’s 7even interactive has emerged the only agency in West African with a medal in the “Digital & Interactive Communication: Social Media category at the just concluded Loeries International advertising awards which held in South Africa.
According to entries and nominations data released on the organizers (Loeries) Awards website, only three Nigerian advertising agencies’ entries got shortlisted for the awards. These include Noah’s Ark’s two nominations; X3M Ideas has one while 7even Interactive also had one nomination.
At the awards proper which held last weekend in Durban, South Africa, young but unconventional 7even Interactive, currently in its second year in business won a bronze not only as the only Nigerian winner in the 2017 Loeries prestigious annual Advertising awards but the only 2017 Loeries winner in the West African sub-region.
The winning work, tagged “Frixion Vodka” is a self funded, outstanding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) material by the agency in the area of digital interactive and social media aimed at fighting against “Rape”, a social ill that transcends geography and races.
The agency through its uncanny creativity and use of the curiosity and surprise elements got frontline Nigerian movie stars and social commentators to sign unto the project and talk about the social ill on the social media with a view to raising awareness and discourage such bestial act and also bring about respite to suffers and punishments for culprits.
Commenting on the award, Taiwo Agboola, COO, 7even Interactive who expressed delight for the young agency to be acknowledged and given international recognition through the prestigious award expressed that although, “we didn’t plan for it, we were just doing our stuff and we wanted to affect the society positively especially by being in the vanguard to raise voice against the endemic social vice –rape. If in doing this an award of this magnitude comes our way, we are indeed appreciative of it,” the COO declared.
The agency objective is to “raise awareness again the social vice- rape, by re-enacting it on a social media platform. The easiest way to define rape is sex without consent, the key word being without consent. Our objective was to get people, especially those that matter in social circles to discuss the 4-letter word – Rape which has become a commonplace social ill which the society often sweep under the carpet”, he added.
The agency’s logic is, if Kate, Praiz, Toni Kan et al could be furious about using their pictures in a ‘commercial’ without their consents, then RAPE as an offence should be dealt with in more strict terms by all and sundry, Agboola pointed out.
To achieve its aim, the agency dreamed up the “Frixion Vodka”, a fictional brand and deployed the faces and personalities of these ‘stars’ to “advertise” the brand. They were furious and threatened to sue the agency for using their pictures for promoting the “Frixion” without their consents.
However, they were calmed as they reasoned along with the agency when the purpose and intent of the social campaign was explained to them. “Willing they took up the challenge to become ambassadors in our ‘fight against Rape’ interjected Onuoha Ndukwe, Creative Director, 7even Interactive.
This is not the first time the young agency will be recognized for its outstanding creative. In its first year of operation it got two nominations at the Cristal African Awards, Marrakech, Kenya and Loeries, South Africa. In December 2016, the agency emerged in the top six bracket of Nigerian most creative agencies at Lagos at the Lagos Advertising & Ideas Festival winning 8 medals with its outstanding campaign – “Tough Job” for Fidelity bank and others works.
For all these we are grateful to our very young but highly talented and skilled personnel and most importantly our clients for giving up the opportunities, Taiwo disclosed.
We are thankful for this ground breaking prestigious international advertising award coming our way, but first and foremost, we are delighted the project is a worthy cause for the good of the society and human race generally that’s we deployed a good portion of our ‘meager’ resources and expertise to bring about the needed social change