says Femi Odugbemi

Femi Odugbemi, our Personality-of-the-Month, is a highly sought-after cerebral in the creative ecosystem globally. But the humble and internationally celebrated filmmaker, speaker, documentary and content producer refers to himself simply as a storyteller. While his intimidating credentials defines him as an eclectic egghead, his calm, easy and quiet disposition makes him fun and a delight to be with; his love for the creative ecosystem loud and clear.

In this Extreme Close Up (XCU) excerpts to mark his 60th Birthday Anniversary, Femi bares his mind on some sundry issues on the ecosystem including advertising, filmmaking and storytelling, especially telling authentic African stories.

Dare not read it!

What is the state of storytelling for us as a nation, not just advertising, overall? Where are we? How have we travelled? And where are we headed?

I think it is a mixed bag.

Good on one hand because in many ways, we have embraced technology and the opportunities it brings to connect our creativity and imagination on many levels, across borders, into the diaspora; and that is happening in our music industry. We can now have a creative in our music industry who has won a Grammy. That’s massive progress. It’s happening in Nollywood as well. So many films and TV series are being licensed or commissioned by global platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Africa Magic etc. Not to speak of thousands who have YOUTube channels and are aggregating massive numbers of subscribers. Technology is really doing a lot of good in terms of giving access to as many of our young people as possible to create and to tell their stories and use their talent. I also think in terms of the technical quality of the work we have been doing lately, I am very impressed. We are enlarging, expanding, and are reaching out globally. So the creators and consumers of creativity have grown in quantum leaps.

My concern has to do with the originality and uniqueness of the content we are creating. I think there is room for us to better understand the representative nature of creativity - the idea that in a global world, creative success comes from your uniqueness, your source, which is really how representative your content is of your unique context and lived-in experiences. Your background. Your cultural identity and worldview.

The truth of it is our lack of articulation of how our diversity as a country with several ancient cultures, is actually a treasure trove for our creative industries, not a limitation. This is where I think our understanding needs to grow. Many of our young people are telling stories that are sort of lacking in any kind of indigenous representation. Some of these stories could have been made in America or in England; but we are not English people, and we are not Americans. We are all shades of traditions and folklores and spiritisms that make up the colours of Nigeria and there are a thousand untold stories that flavour our languages, our food, our fashion, and the folklores passed down the lineages of our families.

History is a prologue. Many things from our past color and shape our present and our future. Our storytelling is so critical in connecting the dots of all of that. That is where our storytelling needs to mature, because it seems to me like we think that the more we look like something from America, the better a chance we have of being called sophisticated or winning an international award.

But I am an insider in some of these global award bodies and the truth is that those awards are given to celebrate artistic expressions of innovation, alternative worldview or a deep cultural insight that is brilliantly articulated and espoused concerning our shared humanity. Now, all stories are first and foremost human stories, but no story is neutral in perspective. Identity matters in storytelling.

Agenda setting is very important for our industry. I don’t think we are very cautious about it. You will know better in terms of how we get out of that and make it better. In all of these, how are we doing storytelling wise in advertising?

Again, it is a mixed-bag.

Advertising has a different kind of connection with regards to culture. When I began my career at Lintas in the late 80s, a lot of our commercials were very locally referenced and culturally centred. Creative directors like Uncle Ted Mukoro, and great copywriters like Yori Folarin, Ngozi Caulcrick, and many others told brand stories that connected us to the many sides of what it meant to be Africans, to be Nigerians. Their stories reflected many aspects of our traditions and culture. They were layered into the context of the stories - family roots, respect for the elderly, care for the aged, hard work as pathway to prosperity, fairness to others, honesty and integrity in business and commerce. These are our worldview, our ethical interpretation of the world.

Those norms were reflected in the brand stories that we told. The brand stories were representative of the things that we, as a people, as a community, believed in. The brands were part of us, and that showed in the films, in the radio commercials and the print designs. Some of those commercials might have even been produced abroad but that did not change the fundamental essence of their messaging. So the argument is not about whether they were produced locally or abroad; It is about the storytelling and content design itself.

I think it is regrettable that we moved away from that hyperlocal approach at some point. Back then, INSIGHT built the BAGCO SUPERSACK brand from the ground up telling local stories, using local talent. It was a time when great local storytelling built brands from nothing to everything. Advertising in Nigeria back then was ahead of the curve in connecting and creating from a representative context.

Now how do we create representatively? Culture is evolving; Culture is ongoing. There are many ways in which we need our stories to bring healing, to be more enriching for our country as well. We need to begin to re-prioritize how we represent values like wealth, success and money inside our stories. Our stories now represent success from the perspective of whoever steals it, owns it, and so you will find out there is a way young people internalize these messaging such that they diminish the worth of integrity and ethics in public conduct.

On the flip side of that, we have many aspects of our creative industries that are doing amazing things that we need to embrace and appropriate into making advertising work. Our fashion industry is far ahead of what I see in our TV commercials and advertising. Our music is far, far ahead of what we see or hear on our radio jingles. If you look at our music video industry as well, the production design and the cinematography are things to marvel at with their level of sophistication.

Storytelling in advertising is serious business. In every great industry in the world, the best directors, the best writers, the best production designers often come from advertising agencies and so to me one way to judge is to ask yourself - these writers in my agency how are they expressing their talent and creativity outside of the four walls of the agency? If you have a copywriter who hasn’t written a book, cannot even write a long article, has never written a film, or even artists who do not create anything else beyond the demands of client briefs, you should push them to push their capacities more expansively. When you are an originator, you can’t stop yourself from expressing your talent in different forms and expressions beyond client briefs.

Our advertising agencies must recover the heritage of leading the creative industries of Nigeria with the best storytelling, the best storytellers and the most culturally representative brand stories.

You seem to be pained by the growing lack of originality and authenticity in our stories. It looks like our stories are being tainted and the cultural lines are getting blurred. What is the way forward here? More training, manpower or gate-keeping?

There are things that I think are important with regards to that question. I think we need to boost the creative component of every job specification in our agencies; Sometimes the ‘suits,’ as we used to call the account management guys or the research guys, are really not as concerned with creativity. They just want the client’s approval on something, anything really, so they can raise billing. We have to make sure that we have global buy-in and everybody needs to be mission-focused as regards the agency’s responsibilities to a brand in terms of innovation and creativity output.

One of the things I have learnt in the last couple of years is how incredibly talented Nigerian youths are, and how powerful their creativity and their exploration of technology can be. It is not all of them whose work we can see out there. It is not all of them who are doing advertising. That is why I said we have to look for them.

What do you have for that young person starting out and wondering what the future holds for him in the creative industry?

Be intentional about learning, unlearning and relearning. One thing that impacts the entirety of the creative industries is the dynamism, the speed at which things are changing. You have to be intentional because intentionality allows you to be observant and constantly open to new ideas, to read and to consume. If you are a writer, you have to read widely. If you are an artist, you have to be at all those exhibitions and museums. If you are a producer, you have to be watching films and be on locations where they are creating them apart from your TV commercials. You have to support other people’s creative instincts because all of them combine to settle in your subconscious so that when you synthesize them, you create in a superior and more imaginative way; that to me is why I said focus intentionally on learning, unlearning and relearning.

I would add this for free. Your creative ancestors are not your enemies. I have noticed recently that rather than respect those who have gone before us, rather than celebrate the work they did and how far they’ve brought this industry, we wish for them to disappear and go away. We do not understand what it means to sit at the footstool of an elder creative. The elders in any industry have a treasure throve of data that you get for free. They had to live to get it and you can take it from them and take it forward. So it’s better not to compete with a Lanre Adisa, it’s better not to compete with a Julia Oku or a Steve Babaeko. It is better to sit with them, make them mentors and learn. Refrain from all the arrogant nonsense that debar you from being able to access wisdom, capacity and integrity.

How do you see the future of advertising?

The future of advertising and brand communication is content. It is not TV commercials. Lanre Adisa of Noah’s Ark understands that, Steve Babaeko of X3M Ideas understands that. A lot of guys in marketing understand that because they are all into creating production companies. Unfortunately, there are many people that are still thinking the one-minute commercial is the profit centre for the agency.

While I need them to understand what is going on, it is on the client side that the transition really needs to occur.

They are too many clients who think they are mini gods. They think that the budget is meant for games. There is a basic inability for them to take a risk. They talk risk but they don’t take risk and they cannot make that transition unless they do.

It is an aberration that we have an industry that has Nollywood with all the producers, all these musicians, all these creative people that are wining Grammys, that have been nominated for awards like Oscars, and those who have been made judges of many international awards and the world recognizing Nigerian talents yet our brands will say they can’t find talents in Nigeria. They still want to go to South Africa to spend 1 million Dollars to make 30 seconds commercial whereas if it was in Nigeria, all that they got to do is look around and trust the talent.

If they are going to make a transition to content, they have no choice but to transmit talents.

The question is do I still think this is the future? No. The future is content. For instance, people are making 15-20 million by just making skits with their phones.

The way forward

I think we still have a long way to go in advertising. Other tripods of the industry have gone far but the marketing side of advertising is just refusing to move.

The director general of ARCON said he wants to setup a training school. It is not about the school, it’s an attitude problem. All of us are supposed to conform to the ethical side of the industry. It is critical.

The advertising industry has always been the one at the front of creating excellence in creative expressions. But in Nigeria, we are at the back and we are the ones that are badmouthing it, not facilitating it. So with Nollywood growing, the music industry growing, there has to be symbiotic relationship between advertising and them because that is where they originated from.

Everywhere I go abroad and see a very good director, he will always tell me that he started his career in advertising. Any good film director started from directing film commercials.

People want entertainment. They give you a certain credit when your brand is a facilitator of that. The truth of the matter is when your brand is associated to what I call the dopamine feeling, that feel-good feeling, it becomes the facilitator of a good time. You don’t have to tell them what your brand is, they are friends of the brand because your brand has been friends with them. That is also a very critical part of that relationship.

Basically, for me, I am using content, stories to reach out to the young people. The only we can teach them is through entertainment, the only way we can educate them is through entertainment and the only way we show them the way is through entertainment because they keep repeating the same mistakes.

Tell us a little about Zuri24 Media

Zuri24 Media is a content creating and film/TV production company based in Lagos Nigeria. We are affiliated to film production institutions across the globe with ready access to the best and brightest talents in the industry. Presently we have two offices - our head office in Lekki Lagos Island and Studio in Ojodu, Lagos Mainland.

A lot of my crew live on the Mainland. We have six staff buses and they pick people up in the morning. Our meetings are in the morning, by 7:00AM and on Zoom.

I have an advertising background so everything we do today came from that background - the way we run our system, the structure, the discipline, staff, all are from advertising. We start work at 7:00 AM.

As a content company, we don’t do advertising like others do. We rely on commission. We create and pitch programs. The marketing of the programs is done in quantum with the broadcaster. My broadcaster of choice has been Multichoice for almost 25 years. They have trusted me to fund ahead - that takes a lot of trust.

Who do you consider as your major clients?

We have three major clients - Multichoice, Netflix and Prime Video. These three are the ones that we pitch shows to and they have the broadcast platforms to take the shows. They also give us the money to make the shows. We also have MTN.

How would you describe relationship with your clients?

We have a relationship of trust with our clients. They trust that we will do something that they can sell, so they advance us the money. When we have done up to 30 or 40 episodes, they will start with their marketing team to market it. That is really why advertising for us is not a big deal.

So we have Multichoice trusting us, MTN trusting Multichoice. It is not a capsule, it is a long term investment. Like I tell people, you can’t do content like you’re taking paracetamol, you do content like you’re taking antibiotics. You have to finish the course. If you don’t finish the dosage, it doesn’t work.

Can you say a word on your latest series - Covenant?

The story is very multilayered. It is about politics and it is also about love. It is also about what happens when they finish using these young boys as thugs for politics. Basically, that is what the story is about.

To start, we couldn’t find a building on the Island. We looked for four months before we found the one at Ojodu to use as studio because it was available and it was at the right price.

Half of the filming is done in our studio in Ojodu. We also have a couple of hotels where we do releases like big conference events. We have the Palace we go to and there is also the NURTW, the garage that we use.

We use a lot of costume so we have a whole section for tailoring or fashion designing that creates the costume. We make clothes every day.

What do you do with the costume after the series?

We auction them and donate the money to charities. The people that buy the clothes decide which charity the money goes to.

How do you do it?

Each charity has a box and tickets so you go to the box, pick a ticket and shop. Whatever you pick and pay goes to the charity. We’ve done that every year for five years.

Some of my friends buy the clothes at double the price and they use that as a show of support.

When we did Battleground, because we did that for two years, we made up to seven million bucks in the sales.

Now on filmmaking in Africa. As an accomplished African filmmaker, what would you say are the most pressing barriers and challenges for young filmmakers to start a career in film production?

The most pressing barrier people talk about the most in African cinema is probably finance. And that is true, but it is not the only truth. Yes, many emerging filmmakers need startup funds to make their films so opportunity like the NETFLIX/UNESCO African Folktales Reimagined are valuable because they offer the proper funding to bring ideas to life.

But beyond the funding I also think it is also about education and finding your creative voice in the sense of having clarity about why you want to make films, what kinds of films you wish to make and getting educated either formally or informally to develop the knowledge and craftsmanship necessary to succeed.

Young filmmakers need to learn not just how to make film but also how to watch films. They need to understand audience dynamics, the conventions off different genres of storytelling and of course project management so that they are effective in managing budgets too. They need to read widely and be conscious of historical narratives and the concepts of representation and identity in storytelling.

So for me funding is a critical barrier, distribution is another critical barrier as we contend with a very low film screen to population ratio across the continent, but the biggest barrier may be education.

How do you see the future of African film?

I think the future of the African Film industry is bright. We have reasons be very excited about what this industry will be in another five years, in another ten years and I think the platforms that reward excellence like the African Magic Viewers Choice Awards will fast track our path to that future.

As a storyteller who advocates for authentic African stories, what is your assessment of the way we tell our stories today?

Too many stories of Africa are reflections of our worst instincts and not enough imagination to foreshadow how we want to see our communities, our governments, our infrastructure and our future. We need to empower ourselves better with our stories.

How was it done in the past?

Storytelling has always been our superpower.

The village square, the markets and the courtyards were spaces filled with folklore. These stories were always deliberately crated to offer guidance and insight that shape the future of our communities and modified behaviour.

They invented heroes and told tales of uncommon courage and selfless sacrifice in service of community. They fostered tribal pride with poetry and songs that detailed the history of a thousand sojourns and valiant progenitors. They created realms of metaphysical existence where forebears translated into unseen protectors and guardians of the tribe. They built into every story a future reputation and the sustenance of the peace and prosperity of their tribes. They were conscious always to choose the future they desired by imbibing it in the imaginations of their audience.

What is the best way for us to tell more compelling and authentic African stories now?

I think it is very important that it is made clear that the global environment is not looking for us to bring their known stories to them. They are looking for us to bring OUR untold stories. That is why international platforms are beating a path to unique creative expressions like Nollywood. We must understand that the world is waiting for our stories. We need to know that and be free to tell those stories as well as we can.

There are many ways in which we need our stories to begin to be more healing, more enriching for our continent as well. We need to begin to reprioritize how we represent wealth, success and money, inside our stories.

We absolutely have to be far more deliberate and conscious about the images we leave in the subconscious of our audiences about what is Africa because what we imagine and storysell becomes our reality in the fullness of time.

What is your advice to aspiring and young filmmakers who are beginning their journeys as filmmakers?

Filmmaking is a lot of fun so enjoy it. Filmmaking is also a craft. Learn it. Filmmaking is a language and with specific vocabularies and sub-languages of composition,

Visual design, lighting, image control, continuity, movement. Learning these helps you to create not just stories but visual poetry. And that’s what builds you an audience and the influence you need to attract funding and support for your work.

Finally, I would say make meaning when you make films. Filmmaking is a powerful craft that gives you opportunity for massive influence. Make the most of it with themes and stories that bring profundity and perspective to issues.