LAIF Begins At 19?
Let me start by warning that a lot of intended and maybe a few unintended puns may litter this piece…kindly bear with me. The phrase, “Go get a life” comes in handy if there is a need to encourage someone to strive for the better, get ahead, or more rudely put, to get out. This phrase is apt for me in writing this piece about LAIF, the acronym for the Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival.
Consider the piece a rallying cry for the Nigerian advertising industry to consider getting ahead by collectively adopting LAIF as a comprehensive, industry-wide awards platform. It’s a long shot, may probably need years, if not decades of consideration but it is certainly something I believe is worth thinking about.
My first practical experience with LAIF was when the festival clocked a decade some nine years ago. That was when I covered the festival for Brand Communicator, having returned to the advertising industry after a brief stint at Marketing Edge in 2011 and a spell at Vanguard newspapers between 2012 and 2014.
LAIF, a brainchild and property of the Association Of Advertising Agencies Of Nigeria (AAAN) and the oldest awards platform in the advertising industry in Nigeria, will go on to hold eight other editions with the nineteenth edition in full swing as preparations by the Jay Chukwuemeka-led LAIF Management Board (LMB) is underway for an edition dubbed ‘Staying A’LAIF’.
At 19, if LAIF were to be a person, it would be a gangly youth at the peak of its teenage years; an adult who is above the stipulated legal age of consent and by all rights, (b)old enough to have a girlfriend/boyfriend or even married in some climes. Suffice it to say, LAIF has come of age and is ready for bigger things, prepared to evolve.
While it has done so over the years extending its tentacles beyond Nigeria to other countries in Western Africa, it does have the potential to become so much more. It can become Africa’s biggest platform for the recognition of excellence in the advertising industry, to best the Loeries in South Africa, the Cristals in Morocco, and even the Cannes in France.
Industry award platforms over subsectors
Why LAIF, you might ask? Well, let’s take a step back to examine these platforms across the subsectors. Like in many countries, the advertising industry in Nigeria is composed of various subsectors, each with its unique contributions and challenges. Over the years, these subsectors have developed their own awards and recognition platforms. The Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN) hosts an annual President’s dinner to recognize outstanding contributors to their field. Only in its second edition and aiming for a third this year, the event features a thought-leadership session and a dinner party that features awards presentations.
For advertisers also, there is the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) African Marketing Awards for Excellence which celebrates brands, organisations, and professionals across the marketing communications spectrum. The annual awards, which hit its 11th Edition, is one of the most celebrated events in the nation’s marcoms industry. At the risk of tutting my horn, I make bold to say that yours truly has won at this platform twice, emerging Journalist of the Year in 2021 and 2023.
For the Out-of-Home sector with an apex body like the Out-Of-Home Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (OAAN) formerly Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, the Posters Awards was an annual event until 2016. For years, the Posters Awards was one award everyone in the advertising industry looked forward to. I particularly remember attending one at the Grand Eko Hotel in Lagos. Whether OAAN has suspended the Posters Awards or completely shelved it following its myriads of problems, one cannot tell now. Whatever it is, the Posters has remained in limbo for years now.
For the youngest member of the advertising industry, the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN), there is the EXMAN Awards for Excellence, which’s also designed to reward, honour, and celebrate outstanding member agencies and marketing communications professionals who have raised the bar in terms of creativity, strategy, and project execution. It also recognized works that provide consumers with meaningful experiences and impact positively on clients’ businesses. Every other year, experiential agencies and professionals battle in fifteen categories for various prizes within that industry.
Why a single LAIF may be better
I am not attempting to diminish the importance or undervalue the achievements of the multifarious sectoral awards in the industry. Sentiments aside, these platforms have achieved remarkable successes and made contributions to their respective sectors. They have all played crucial roles in recognizing excellence, promoting innovation, and driving growth. This piece is however seeking to build upon the collective successes of the various platforms and exploring the possibility of leveraging their combined strengths to impose a pan-Nigerian advertising industry on subregional, regional and possibly global stages.
From a practical standpoint, consolidating resources into one grand event, rather than several smaller ones, would lead to greater impact and wider reach. I am certain that a larger, more comprehensive LAIF would likely attract more attention, participation, and investment. It would also allow for a more holistic evaluation of advertising campaigns, considering all aspects from creative conception to media placement and real-world execution, among others.
Every year without fail, I have attended the National Advertising Conference (NAC) in Abuja. There, at the behest of the apex advertising industry regulator, the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), the crème-de-la-crème of the advertising industry gather, including representatives from agencies, advertisers, and other stakeholders. They discuss among other things how to grow the industry, get the deserved respect, recognition, and acknowledgment of its impact on the Nigerian economy and industry collaboration and co-creation. How else do we put collaboration into practice beyond clever rhetoric that on this?
The increased scale and prestige of a unified LAIF would make it more attractive to sponsors and partners. This could lead to greater financial support and collaboration opportunities, further enhancing the event’s impact and highlighting the industry’s stature. Such opportunities can create the opportunity of ‘franchising’ LAIF to give it more room to expand. Moreover, a more prestigious, industry-wide award would serve as a powerful tool for attracting and retaining top talent in the Nigerian advertising sector. Young professionals and creatives would be more drawn to an industry that offers recognition on such a grand scale.
The prospect of gathering combining award categories from different subsectors might seem daunting, but I am certain that it would present an opportunity to create a more refined and relevant set of categories. These could better reflect the evolving nature of the advertising industry, acknowledging traditional strengths while also recognizing emerging trends and technologies. The volume or scale of awards at this LAIF will not matter. Besides, award ceremonies can last for days, culminating into a grand finale. Since LAIF is actually positioned to be a festival, it makes this even better.
A unified LAIF will bring the advertising industry even closer, considering that beyond the veil of the Heads of Advertising Sectoral Groups (HASG) and joint committees set up by ARCON, these sub-sectors and groups will have no choice but to work together on an industry-wide scale to push this event into the consciousness of players within and outside the continent.
A bigger LAIF would flatter the sheer size of the Nigerian advertising market. This will ensuring that the world sees the Nigerian market for how big it truly is. What the different sectoral awards has done is to project different sections of the industry in a manner that downplays the true size of the market, its growth over the years and the sophistications that contributed in he emergence of the various sectors.
Additionally, it gives room for other sub-sectoral players like the Association of Digital Marketing Professionals (ADMARP) to be a part of this grand award without having to set up their separate award platform that would further fragment the industry.
In terms of global competitiveness, I am certain that a unified LAIF could position Nigeria’s advertising more prominentlyon the world stage. Following the model of international awards like the Cannes Lions, LAIF could become a benchmark for advertising excellence not just in Nigeria, but across Africa and beyond.
What’s in a name? Why LAIF?
To be clear, the idea for a unified LAIF could easily be for a unified EXMAN Awards or even ADVAN’s. LAIF, however, stands out for a number of reasons. Besides being the oldest platform in the industry, it is better positioned for the entire industry. One of the reasons for this positioning is in its name. Like the father of positioning, Al Ries and his daughter, Laura Ries had surmised in one of their numerous marketing books, a name is everything when it comes to branding. LAIF follows the trend of many of the global award platforms in the world that adopted the names of cities in their nomenclature. Examples include the New York Advertising Festival and the Cannes Festival of Creativity among others. Strongly entrenched in its name is Nigeria’s biggest metropolitan city, Lagos. As Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, it is only appropriate that among all the cities in Nigeria, it is considered. Additionally, the name of the awards is all-encompassing. ‘Advertising’ is one word that captures everything all the sub-sectoral groups do while ‘IDEAS’ also incorporates the creativity behind everything that drives the industry’s creativity.
Bottlenecks
While this idea for the kind of LAIF I am proposing may be sound, it will not be without challenges. One of these challenges may be how willing the sub-sectoral groups would be in ditching their various awards platforms for a single unified platform, giving the emotional attachment they might have built up to their individual awards vehicles. They would feel a sense of loss for the painstaking efforts of building their award brand over the years, and they are entitled to it. There is also the challenge of whether AAAN would be willing to ‘share’ its LAIF with others.
This means everyone would have to lose some and win some is a bigger industry-wide rewards platform would ever be built.
Also, the current challenges in the industry with ADVAN pulling out of the HASG and OAAN’s spat with the HASG may throw spanners into the works of this collaboration. But in spite of these, I am optimistic that something strong and beneficial to all concerned should come out of this envisioned fusion, particularly considering that AAAN the brain behind LAIF has its President, Mr. Lanre Adisa on the driver’s seat of the HASG. Hopefully, he could consider working towards this for the good of the entire industry. The recent partnership between AAAN and MIPAN for the 19th LAIF Awards is an encouraging step in this direction, one that could serve as a blueprint for further engagement towards the integration of other subsectors.