By Tunji Faleye
Troyka Holdings has appointed Lekan Lawal as Chief Operations Officer for Leo Burnett, a fast-rising advertising agency in Nigeria.
His appointment is coming barely few weeks after Samuel Osunsoko, former Managing Director of the agency resigned his appointment with the Troyka Group bringing his 18 and half years of meritorious service to a close.
Lekan is a consummate marketing communication professional with experience that cut across organizations and industries including advertising and Information Technology. He possesses proven capabilities in business development, product development (with a bias to market entry) and brand development.
Within 15 years, Lekan has procured communication strategy and business development services for organizations such as Total Nigeria, First Bank Nigeria, British Council Nigeria and brands such as Glo, etisalat, Ford etc.
It is expected that Lekan will bring all these competencies to play at Leo Burnett and carry on from where Osunsoko stopped.
Before joining Leo Burnett, Lekan was the Director of Brand Planning & Management at Creativexone Limited, the agency he joined from January 2012 till January 2018. At Creative Zone, Lekan was in charge of Airtel portfolio as Account Director. He also provided insights that enabled brands in the agency’s portfolio to stay afloat.
He was also at Noah’s Ark Communications as Director of Strategy and Business Development. He joined Noah’s Ark in August 2015 and left in February 2018, spending two years and seven months
He also worked with Marketing Communication from May 2012 to April 2014 where he functioned in a consulting capacity to assist in developing and implementing marketing communication strategies required by different outputs in the GEMS 2 project. GEM is Growth and Employment project in Nigeria. It is an employment project by the Ministry of Trade and Investment and is supported by the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The project is aimed at job creation and increased non-oil growth in specific high potential value chain sectors.
Lekan had Executive MBA in Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services from Metropolitan School of Business & Management (Online programme) in 2015.
He is also an alumnus of prestigious Lagos Business School (Corporate Communications) and Moshood Abiola Polytechnic where he studied Mass Communications from 1994 to 2001.