A recent report by Plaqad, an emerging global marketing, and PR technology company, has shown that sponsors of the Big Brother Naija reality TV show gained massive economic value by partnering with the organizers of the show.
The report titled ‘Big Brother Naija Report’ is the second edition from the company with its primary goal to provide valuable insights into the public perception of the famed reality TV show, its impact on the youth culture in Nigeria, and the Nigerian economy.
Season six of the reality TV show garnered 1 billion votes and 300 million votes in the final week. The show attracts millions of viewers, who in today’s world not only watch but tweet about their experiences, the debate about events, and also root for their favourite housemates.
While fans see the show as entertainment content, sponsors saw it as an avenue to create more visibility for their brand while also getting value in terms of revenue.
The brands strategize and draw up ways to leverage BBNaija’s viewership to increase direct sales, user acquisition, brand awareness, and whatever other objectives they consider most important to them.
For the Shine Ya Eye season, the headline sponsor was Abeg, a FinTech platform that allows users to gift friends cash and make purchases using their fast money transfer technology.
Joining them was another FinTech company, Patricia, who plays in the cryptocurrency space, and clinched the associate sponsor spot for an unverified but certainly huge fee just like Abeg; and other returning sponsors like Bet9ja who were headline sponsors in 2019, Guinness, Close-Up, Tecno, Pepsi, Dano Milk, Minimie Noodles, Darling, and new sponsors such as Supa Komando
When Plaqad asked why they chose to sponsor the Big Brother Naija show, the responses revolved around building top-of-mind awareness, driving some brand love, and building loyalty from existing customers.
Most of them looking to drive awareness, ads, branding of the BBNaija house, and supplies of products for usage during the 10-week duration of the reality TV show were some of the branding touchpoints through which they tried to execute their strategies.
Headline sponsor, Abeg, who branded the BBNaija currency as ‘Abeg Naira’, decorated parts of the house with their logo, ran ads during commercial breaks, and sponsored a number of the tasks for the housemates experienced an 8900% increase in app downloads moving from just 20,000 downloads at the start of the Big Brother Naija Season 6 show to 1.8 million app downloads by the end of the show.
For some of the sponsors, not only does this astronomical rise show in their user acquisition numbers, it shows in their brand revenue as well which in turn reflects on government earnings in terms of taxes implying some indirect contribution from the
BBNaija shows the economic development of Nigeria.
The report added that at least 55.7% of the survey respondents said that seeing a brand sponsor BBNaija influenced their patronage of the brand, proving the effectiveness of the show sponsorship for sponsors.