Adekanmbi,MYN's CMO

MTN Pulse ad, Etisalat extra credit ad,re-echo Saka’i don port’ ad
By Sanya Ademiluyi

Native Advertising may be getting more popular as big brands boldly approve fresh creative work and campaign based on it.Etisalat,MTN ,Nigerian Breweries are big brand and corporate names that are increasingly deploying native advertising.DDB Lagos latest advert for MTN Pulse,a data bundle product,is a bold one.The main character in the ad is a security man for a rival GSM network.He reports the news that MTN Pulse has returned to grab market share.He speaks bad English that is typical of low cadre workers with his level of education.Many educated elite would winch at his English grammar faux paus.
But the key here is that he passes the believability test.He is authentic.He actually speaks in this ad the same way he would speak in real life.
Many Nigerians are familiar with the ‘Saka Don Port’ ad campaign used by MTN to launch its number portability campaign two years ago.The results were astonishing.The campaign was a huge success.The ad was created by DDBLagos.The background for that success was the popularity of comedian actor,Hafiz Oyediran who had been acting as a lead character in several product ads by rival GSM network,Etisalat.
Etisalat is using the same creative strategy of deploying native advertising- for its ongoing’ bonus credit’ marketing campaign.
One of the country’s biggest advertisers and its biggest brewer,Nigerian Breweries Plc is also using native advertising for Roots Ace ,its new blended alcohol beverage which has a ampaign on radio.Native advertising may be a perfect fit for a product based on local spices and fruit extracts.Orijin, Guinness Nigeria’s highly successful brand of alcohol blended beverage with local herbs ,spices and extracts is reinforcing the success of that locally developed brand through native advertising.It recently mounted a huge native African talking drum emblazoned with Orijin livery  at a major highway on Ikorodu road,Ojota area in Lagos.The company is anticipated to roll out more brand promotion activity along same line.
In Etisalat’s current TV flick for its ‘bonus credit’ campaign,two characters  at a restuarant talk about bonus credits that don’t last.The third character,who is a well known comedian speaks with a phony American accent,recommending Etisalat’s bonus credit.They don’t believe him though.Then,a fourth character,the restuarant operator, a big madam with a heavy,indigenous Wafi(Warri) accent joins in recommending the Etisalat bonus credit,(which offers  250 per cent bonus),which quickly convinces the first two characters- and expectedly viewers.Ad agency,X3M Ideas created the flick.
It would appear native advertising is gradually coming into the mainstream of advertising in the country’s adland.It may appear to be a long walk though.Early popular native infusion into ad creativity in the country is the payoff line for Star lager beer,’shine,shine,bobo’,coined by legendary copywriter and creative director,Ted Mukoro of Lintas fame.Even so,for a long time,much of ‘native advertising’ in Nigeria’s adland had been restricted to radio,where to reach uneducated people copywriters had to use pidgin english.Most time they simply translated their English language commercials into  local pidgin English and other indigenous languages such as Igbo,Yoruba,Hausa,Wafi(Warri) pidgin,Ibibio among others.
In other parts of the world,especially Latin America, ‘native advertising’ is widely popular and becoming mainstream.It has been credited with assisting big global beverage brands such as Coca cola,SABMillers,MillerCoors,Pernod Ricard to grow faster in those markets.
At 2014’s Cannes Lions,one of the advertising festival’s leading lights and a regular fixture, Sir Martin Sorrell(Chairman,WPP)  praised ‘native advertising’ for its significant contributions to his agency network,WPP’s good performance that year,
 Insight Communications,one of the country’s leading creative agencies founded in the mid-1980s,began its existence advocating advertising that is in tune with local ideeas.It has ceated several of these creative concepts in several campaigns for clients.Among them are campaign for Dunlop Tyres  and Bagco supersack.The agency  went to this year’s Cannes Lions Festival tooting some of its native advertising creations. Tunji Aboiye,managing director of Fuel Communications,a creative agency agees that native advertising may be going mainstream.He says the concept ‘has been with us for a long time’.He recalls the ad campaigns for Dunlop Tyres,Gala sausage roll(make you take Gala hol(d) de hunger) and that for Gold circle condom,created by Rosabel Advertising about ten yeas ago.
In the Gold Circle ad concept which is situated in a small bus popularly knowned as’ danfo’ in Lagos, a middle aged man unknowingly drops a pack of condoms.The bus conductor finds it.then,raises an alarm in pidgin english’ na who get dis raincoat? Na who get dis condom?” The 5 man owns up. Laughter erupts in the bus.The man says,’na for me and my wife,alone,to take plan our family’.The bus conductor jokes as the man alights,’oga, make you softly,softly with madam ,tonight oo,’(winks).
 “I think that agencies and clients are getting bolder.And we are going to see more and more of these concepts (native thinking) in advertising,” Aboiye says.