By Lukmon Oloyede.
It was a night of recognition of marketing excellence for Nigeria Breweries premium lager beer, Star and Orijin, a brand of Guinness Nigeria at the 2015 Advertising Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) Awards held last Saturday at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos.
Nigeria’s favourite beer, Star bagged some of the most coveted accolades of the night – leaving with four awards: Gold in the ‘Digital and Social Media Marketing Category’ with ‘Star Music App, a mobile application that brings Nigerians closer to music and entertainment content and updates across the country. Gold and Silver respectively in the Experiential Marketing Category with the largest bottle tree in the world ‘Star Bottle Tree’ and annual music concert tour ‘Star Music Trek’.
In his remark, Brand Manager Star, Nigerian Breweries, Obabiyi Fagade described the accolade as huge reward for maintaining high standard and team effort in satisfying and engaging consumers.
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“We are greatly honoured to have our creative output recognised like this and it is a further demonstration of how much time and effort we put into every aspect of our brand existence, from the product to the communications that engage with those who buy the product. At STAR and in the larger Nigerian Breweries family, we have a very old tradition of maintaining only the highest of standards in everything we do, and this is what has made us a consumer favourite and a market leader over the years. We will continue to maintain these strict standards while constantly seeking to improve on what we have and as we do that, it is very gratifying when our effort is recognised by awards like this.”, Fagade said.
Orijin, a brand of Guinness Nigeria won the ‘Brand of the Year’ Award. Orijin has gained more than 50 percent market share of bottled drinks with similar alcohol strength, according to consumer-data company Nielsen Nigeria.
Telecom giant, MTN Foundation was declared winner of the ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ category while Milo Slam won the Consumer Promotion Category. Ace Root clinched the ‘New Brand’ Category award and Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke bagged the Campaign of the Year’. Meanwhile, there were no winners in the Innovation Category due to lack proper entry submission in the category, accord to the jury.
Sherif Akinpelu from University of Lagos emerged winner of this year’s Future Marketing Leader Award.
While giving his welcome speech, the President of ADVAN, Mr. David Okeme, said: “ADVAN has just elected a new Executive council to run its affairs for the new two years of which I have the honour of being a part of. A key objective for the new executive of the association is to provide insights for members that will create greater value from marketing spend, this is why this year our theme is focused on ‘Unlocking growth through sustainability and social impact marketing’.”
To ensure that the award is credible and transparent, Mr. Okeme said the Association ensured that seasoned professional in the IMC industry were brought together. The jury outlined their yardstick for each category.
