Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
After a two-year hiatus, the prestigious Future Brand Idol (FBI), an advertising contest, is making a return on a bigger scale following a new partnership with Forbes Black Member community member, Mr Emmanuel Dairo.
The competition, which seeks to discover and breed young creative talents in Nigerian tertiary institutions, has created top talents who have gone to explore new grounds in their respective endeavours.
Through this newly forged relationship, the founder of the contest, Mr Abdullahi Ahmed Atewe, and Mr Dairo will be seeking to expand the horizon of the challenge to offer more value.
This will see fresh partnerships and expansion of the awards including new categories that will take into account the evolving nature of the creative industry.
The planned creative contest which will be unveiled soon will feature industry bellwethers as well as other creative engines and titans of the industry as the stakeholders.
Commenting on the development, Mr Atewe said through initiatives like the Future Brand Idol, students can have access to practical knowledge about their courses via interaction with professionals through training, seminars and workshops.
He called on stakeholders in the integrated marketing communication industry to support the sustainability of talents in the industry in order to prevent and groom students who will grow to be future brand problem solvers.
He said, “With this new partnership, we want to break new ground. Our industry has evolved. We are competing not against each other but against advancements in technology and it is very important to see how we can merge this to create better output.”
On his part, Mr Dairo said, “What we are looking at here is the evolution of Future Brand Idol. Coming on board will change the face of this award. As Abdullahi has said, there are many people breaking new grounds and it is cognisant we give them the backing and recognition they wholly deserve.”
At the last event in 2021, Oluwadara Adesanya of the University of Ibadan emerged as the winner while Favour Olushola (University of Lagos) and Shola Adido (University of Ilorin) emerged as first and second runners-up, respectively.
The previous editions have seen input from top industry leaders like Lanre Adisa and Ozone Mbanefo.
