sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd BrandArena: Nigerian Students Charged on Entrepreneurship at BrandiQ Club Launch

Wednesday 23 April 2014

Nigerian Students Charged on Entrepreneurship at BrandiQ Club Launch

A call has gone out to Nigerian undergraduates - particularly students and practitioners of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) - to endeavour to develop their intellect and creative minds during their formative years in the higher institution in a bid to acquire the entrepreneurship drive needed for the job market as a way of tackling unemployment and its attendant socio-economic problems.

This charge was given by some key figures in the IMC industry as well as entrepreneurs, notably seasoned broadcaster and publisher of Today’s Woman magazine, Mrs Adesuwa Onyenokwe; and marketing guru and CEO of Trends Insight Intelligence Network, Mr Franklin Ozekhome during the inaugural launch of the BrandiQ Campus Club at Pan-Atlantic University (PAU), Lekki, Lagos.

In a welcome address delivered by the Dean, School of Media and Communication, PAU, Professor Emevwo Biakolo, he described the gathering as a forum for cultivating imaginative ideas for the good of the society. “You can’t put values to small ideas; with time they blow to become institutions. The small ideas of yesterday have become the great institutions of today.” Referring to the motto of BrandiQ – ‘Vision Powered by Intellect,’ he said that the occasion provided a platform to “create a chain of learning,” noting that the time has come for BrandiQ to move on to higher goals.

Setting the tone for the dominant subject of discussion, the Editor-in-Chief, BrandiQ Magazine, Mr Desmond Ekeh, described the occasion as a “watershed.” Mr Ekeh, who stated that he conceived the idea of a brand-focused magazine right from his days as student of journalism, announced the intention to move the BrandiQ Campus Club train to other major campuses across the federation. “We have spoken to industry experts who are poised to mentor students in the area of their endeavour. This will involve the use of conferences, workshops, seminars, symposiums and other professional windows and mediums of supporting the academic world,” he said.


Citing the reasons for the establishing the club, he said that it would enable students “to report the industry and activities of players in the industry,” and “help them to be able to transit from the university to the labour market.”  In bemoaning the disconnect between the university and the labour market, in terms of capacity, Mr Ekeh noted that recent experience by employers has shown that it is becoming increasingly difficult for graduates to “enter into the labour market,” hence the need to “fire up their entrepreneurial spirit,” while still in school, through such initiative. The “purpose is to connect the campus with the industry,” he submitted.

CEO of Trends Insight Intelligence Network and former Head of Marketing at Insight Communications, Mr Franklin Ozekhome, set the occasion alight with a presentation on consumer insight and trend analysis in the marketing communication industry. In laying bare a new vista of ideas - which according to him is yet to be tapped in the industry - he took participants through his career journey stating the reason for establishing his own firm.

“Having worked across several advertising and media organizations, I have come to a point in my professional career when I have to spring up new and innovative ideas which will bolster our intellectual capacity using brand engagement platforms. We are beginning to view and understand consumers as human and not consumers by deploying the 5Cs, namely, Consumer Community, Connection, Creation, Commerce and Consumer. Our lab-mentality is geared to probe deeper into consumer insight beyond the ordinary and surface traditional assumptions,’’ he said.

In the same vein, former NTA broadcaster, Adesuwa Onyenokwe, who shared the experience of how she moved from broadcasting to print journalism, charged students to be persistent and begin early in life to identify their passion, noting that “individuals are fired up by that thing that always bothers them. We should learn to re-position ourselves in spite of the challenges faced on a daily basis.”

BrandiQ Tutorials is fashioned after the intellectual heritage of Harvard Business Review with the reportorial typology of the Economist and the Content patterned after Ad Age, brandchannel, bizcommunity.com, Adweek etc. It is is designed as a specific tutorial package aimed to appeal and meet the research and academic needs of the teeming population of students who really have the desire and need to understand the marketing communications world beyond the theories they are taught in school.

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