Brand Nigeria has huge potential but inconsistent execution. From your experience in narrative and market positioning, what is your honest diagnosis, and what would genuine repositioning require?
Brand Nigeria does not have a visibility problem. It has a narrative problem. I say that with conviction because I see the same pattern in businesses every day. Nigeria is one of the most visible countries on the planet. Our music is on global charts. Our films are on international streaming platforms. Our diaspora is in boardrooms, hospitals, and universities across major cities around the world. We are not invisible. We are simply not telling a coherent story about what we stand for. And when that gap exists, the world fills it with whatever narrative is most available, which is rarely the one that serves us.
A defined narrative, told consistently and pushed through the right channels, does more than inform people. It shapes perception, creates interest, and can attract investment. Investment creates businesses and industries. Industries create employment and economic activity. That is the compounding return on narrative investment, and it applies at both state and national levels.
So, what would an actual Brand Nigeria repositioning look like? First, a decision, not a committee, not a rebrand exercise. A genuine decision about the story Nigeria is choosing to own, built around our real, demonstrable strengths: our market size, talent density, creative output, and resilience.
Second is consistency. The government, the private sector, and the diaspora all need to show up within that story rather than telling competing versions of it.
Third is measurement: treating Brand Nigeria like a campaign with defined outcomes: investment attracted, trade expanded, tourism increased, and talent retained or returned. Not like a PR exercise.
Nigeria does not need a rebrand. It needs a narrative it is willing to commit to and the discipline to tell it everywhere, over time, without flinching.
That is what turns perception into economic value. At a national scale, that value looks like investment, tourism, trade, and the best of our people choosing to build here.
Nigeria has world-class creative talent, yet that creative excellence rarely translates into world-class brand building for Nigerian businesses. Why is the disconnect happening, and how do we fix it?
This is one of the most important questions the industry is not asking loudly enough. We have proven to the world that Nigerian creativity travels. Afrobeats is a global genre. Nollywood is the second-largest film industry by volume on the planet. Our fashion designers are on international runways.
Our content creators are shaping culture across continents. The creative muscle is not in question. The disconnect is that creativity and brand building are being treated as separate disciplines when they are fundamentally the same thing. A hit record is a narrative. A film that moves people is a narrative. But when Nigerian businesses sit down to build their brands, they abandon that instinct entirely and reach for the most generic, safest version of themselves. They stop being storytellers and become announcers. The fix is not complicated, but it requires a mindset shift.
‘But here is what nobody expected: when people came for that meal, they did not just buy that meal. They bought everything else on the menu too, and sales on every other day improved because the energy around that one narrative created a ripple through the entire business.’
Brands need to approach their identity the way our best creatives approach their craft: with a distinct point of view, a willingness to be specific, and the conviction that the right story told powerfully will find its audience. The businesses that make that shift are the ones that will build brands the world remembers.
If I get you right, most businesses don’t have a visibility problem but rather a narrative problem. Could you break that down?
Take any competitive industry – dental clinics, restaurants, financial services – every brand in that space is showing up, posting content, showcasing work, attending events, and running ads. They are visible, but visible is not the same as chosen. We worked with a restaurant once. My first question when we came on board was simple: what is your best-selling meal? What do people actually come here for? They told us. And I said, ‘Fine.’ Let us build a day around that meal. Declare it. Create a moment. When we did, footfall on that specific day increased significantly.
But here is what nobody expected: when people came for that meal, they did not just buy that meal. They bought everything else on the menu too, and sales on every other day improved because the energy around that one narrative created a ripple through the entire business. That is the difference between visibility and narrative. Visibility gets you seen. Narrative gets you chosen. And in a market this competitive, being seen is no longer enough.
What is the conversation that should be happening instead of digital marketing, ad spend, and follower counts?
A brand came to us with a brief that I hear in different forms constantly: ‘We want one million followers on social media in our first year.’ New brand, new to market, no existing audience. Before responding, I quietly checked the social media following of the most established brand in their industry. A brand that has been operating for over seven years, investing heavily in digital, with a strong team. Their following was under one million. So, I told this client plainly, You are not going to cook your followers and eat them. One million followers is not a business goal. It is a vanity metric. The real question is, what does one million followers actually do for your business? Does it drive awareness? Does it convert to sales? Does it attract the right partners?
When you answer that question honestly, everything changes. You stop chasing numbers and start building with purpose. And the growth follows, because you are playing the bigger game. The conversation that needs to happen in boardrooms is not how many people are seeing us. It is what people understand about us when they see us. Reach without clarity is just noise with a budget.
What are the specific, observable signs that a business has a narrative problem, and why do so many mistakes lead to a visibility or sales problem?
We worked with a brand in the aesthetics space. On their social media bio, they had a line that was genuinely powerful: ‘We improve confidence in women.’ Strong, differentiated, memorable. But when you scrolled through their content, that line existed nowhere else. Not in the stories they told, not in how they celebrated their clients. Not in how they described their services. The narrative was in the bio and nowhere else. And yet this brand was active, posting consistently, attending events, and known within their industry.
By every surface measure, they looked like a brand that had it together. But they were not the first name that came to mind when someone needed to make a decision in their category. That is a narrative problem. And it was being treated as a sales problem, with more campaigns, more spend, and more content. But you cannot spend your way to being the first choice. You earn that through consistency of story. Here is what most brands miss: ‘Narrative has a long game.’
Someone who encounters your story today and does not buy will eventually have a need. And when that moment comes, they will remember. They will search for that brand they saw once that said exactly the right thing. That is what a strong narrative does. It keeps working long after the campaign has ended.
Most business leaders think about the brand after they have built the product; what do you consider a more progressive approach?
If your goal is to build a healthy meal restaurant, the customer has to exist in your thinking from day one: who they are, where to find them, what to say when you do, and why this matters specifically to them. Too many brands launch and then ask – now how do we get people to care? But if you build the narrative from the beginning, people start falling in love with what you are building before it even opens. They feel like they are part of something. That is not marketing; that is architecture. The brands that enter a market and immediately feel inevitable, the ones that seem to have always belonged, did not get there by accident. They defined who they were building for before they built a single thing. And every decision after that was made through that lens.
Finally, what is the most significant result Innoventure has produced in two years, and what was the narrative shift behind it?
Two results stand out. The first was a healthcare support company that had been trying to expand into a new market for some time but kept stalling. When we came in, the problem was clear; they had not yet made their authority unquestionable in their existing market. You cannot export strength you have not yet established at home. We sharpened their narrative, reinforced their market leadership, and then led their entry into a new country. The expansion landed. Their revenue reflected it, their industry positioning reflected it, and the calibre of conversations they were having at a sector level changed entirely.
The second was a government project that came to us framed as a digital advertising campaign. I redirected that early. You cannot put fire into the market without a story behind it; people do not respond to activity, they respond to meaning. We built the narrative first, then executed. We exceeded the campaign target by over 400%. That is what narrative does when it is right. It does not just support the campaign. It is the campaign.