Marketing Titans Are Converging At Markhack’s Inaugural CMOs Circle, And the Timing Could Not Be More Critical
When MarkHack convenes its inaugural CMO Circle, it will confront the most defining questions facing marketing leadership in Nigeria today. This is hinged on the background of the fact that there is a growing crisis at the top of Nigeria’s marketing industry. This crisis is not a crisis of talent as Nigeria has always produced brilliant marketers. It is also not of ambition as Nigerian brands are increasingly punching above their weight on the global stage. The crisis is one of relevance, of whether the Chief Marketing Officer, one of the most important roles in any organisation, is being taken seriously enough, paid attention to sufficiently, or given the strategic latitude needed to navigate one of the most disruptive decades in the history of commerce.
On Friday, June 5, 2026, at Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, that conversation will move from the corridors of corporate frustration into a structured, high-level forum. The inaugural CMO is expected to bring together a number of Nigeria’s most senior marketing executives for a 90-minute, closed-door roundtable unlike anything the industry has seen before.
Behind the Gathering
To understand the CMO Circle, you must first understand MarkHack because the Circle does not exist in isolation. It is the executive crown jewel of a broader ecosystem that has been quietly, methodically building since 2022. MarkHack launched as Nigeria’s first marketing and media hackathon, conceived by Dr. Victor ‘Gbenga Afolabi, Founder of Eko Innovation Centre, in collaboration with GDM Group, the Eko Innovation Centre, and for years now, Nigeria’s foremost business, marketing and communications publication, Brand Communicator. What began as a competitive platform for startups and innovators to pitch technology-driven solutions to real marketing challenges quickly evolved into something far larger.
By its fourth edition in May 2025, MarkHack had logged over 6,275 participants, achieved a reach of 15.8 million, hosted 405 pitching teams, engaged 86 jurors, and enlisted 67 mentors across its editions. Indeed, MarkHack has grown from a hackathon into a full-scale conference and thought-leadership institution. MarkHack 4.0, themed “Experience Ignited: Fuelling The Consumer Journey,” introduced the inaugural Nigerian MarTech Awards, recognising organisations like MTN, OPay, Indomie, Friesland Campina, and Indrive for outstanding innovation at the intersection of marketing and technology. MarkHack 5.0, holding on the same June 5 date and under the theme “The Culture Algorithm: AI × Human Experience,” deepens this mission by placing culture at the centre of the AI conversation, examining how algorithms now shape identity, behaviour, media consumption, and brand meaning across Africa.
The CMO Circle is MarkHack’s most ambitious extension yet. Where the main conference brings together the broad ecosystem of marketers, founders, technologists, and creatives, the CMO Circle narrows the lens to the suite-level executives who must translate all that innovation into strategy, revenue, and sustained organisational growth.
Why Now?
The decision to launch the CMO Circle in 2026 is not arbitrary. It responds to a specific and urgent set of pressures converging on Nigeria’s senior marketing leaders simultaneously.
The first and most relentless is the demand for measurable return on every naira spent. Marketing budgets, once treated as a necessary cost of doing business, are now under forensic scrutiny from boards and executive leadership teams. CMOs are expected to demonstrate clear attribution between marketing activities and revenue outcomes, integrating CRM platforms, analytics dashboards, and sales reporting tools into coherent performance narratives. The rise of performance-based marketing models has made this pressure acute — boards want proof, not promise.
The second pressure is artificial intelligence. AI is no longer a future concept for Nigerian marketing departments, it is already present in content generation, customer segmentation, predictive analytics, and campaign optimisation. Yet adoption is deeply uneven. Many organisations remain in early-stage experimentation, deploying tools faster than they can build the governance frameworks to manage them responsibly. The result is a mounting risk profile of data privacy vulnerabilities, model bias, misinformation exposure, and a staff that is simultaneously being asked to use AI and wondering whether AI will eventually replace them.
Third, consumers are not who they were five years ago. They are more selective, less trusting of traditional advertising, more conscious of how their data is used, and constantly moving between social media, e-commerce, physical retail, and peer-to-peer recommendation networks before making a purchase decision. This is especially so, in a mobile-first market where social commerce and influencer-driven discovery have disrupted the traditional path to purchase.
And beneath all of this runs a structural problem where organisational siloes that fragment marketing effectiveness from the inside. Disconnects between marketing, sales, technology, customer service, and data teams produce scattered campaigns, inconsistent brand messaging, and frustrating customer experiences. Globally, progressive companies are adopting Revenue Operations frameworks to unify these functions but in Nigeria, many enterprises are still grappling with the foundational challenge of getting departments to speak the same language.
The CMO Circle was designed precisely for this reality. As the convener, Dr. Victor ‘Gbenga Afolabi, stated: “The CMO Circle is intentionally designed as a premium, outcomes-driven platform that moves marketing leadership beyond the boardroom into the sphere of policy influence.”
The Architecture of the Conversation
The structure of the CMO Circle shows the seriousness of its intentions. The session is invite-only. This, according to organisers, is a deliberate curation rather than an open registration which ensures that every person in the room has genuine skin in the game of senior marketing leadership. Conversations, according to organisers, will be protected under the Chatham House Rule, meaning participants can freely share insights, challenges, and strategies without the burden of attribution. This matters enormously. Executive candour is rare in public forums precisely because reputational risk suppresses it. The Chatham House framework removes that constraint.
The 90-minute moderated roundtable will be co-chaired by Mrs. Iquo Ukoh, CEO of Entod Marketing and former Director of Marketing Services at Nestlé Nigeria, as well as Mr. Lolu Akinwunmi, Group CEO of Prima Garnet (Ogilvy Nigeria) who brings decades of experience guiding some of Nigeria’s most biggest brands.
The discussion agenda covers the exact terrain where today’s CMOs feel the most pressure including revenue accountability and boardroom expectations; finding the right balance between artificial intelligence and human creativity; winning consumer attention in a fragmented media landscape; building brand trust through responsible data strategy; and resolving the perennial tension between long-term brand equity investment and short-term performance marketing.
The Room Will Be Formidable
The participant list expected at the CMO Circle packs a list of individuals within the IMC industry whose names reverberates across circles. They include Dr. Bolajoko Bayo-Ajayi, President of the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria; Steve Babaeko, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas and President of the International Advertising Association, Nigeria Chapter; Kehinde Salami, Group CEO of Ideas Holdings, and serial marketing director, Dr. Biodun Ajiborode who is Founder of the Brand Management Academy. Femi Bejide of StatiSense; Idorenyen Enang (Corporate Shepherds Limited), Lampe Omoyele (Nitro121), Dr. Emmanuel Agu (Commercial Director, Champion Breweries PLC), Olu Akanmu (Lagos Business School), Thompson Aini (CMO, Deekay Group), and Opeoluwa Filani (Redhook Media and Communications) round out a group that spans agencies, corporates, academia, and data analytics.
The Larger Stakes
Indeed, the CMO Circle arrives at the precise moment when the role of the Chief Marketing Officer is being fundamentally re-evaluated. The best CMOs today are part technologist, part economist, part cultural anthropologist, part revenue strategist. They are expected to build brands that last while proving performance month after month.
MarkHack, with its track record of building conversations since 2022 and a growing ecosystem that includes GDM Group, Eko Innovation Centre, Brand Communicator, has earned the credibility to host this conversation. The CMO Circle is designed for leaders who want more than a seat at the table and want to help build the table itself.
June 5 at Oriental Hotel is where that building begins.
