The Cannes Lions Awards has been the undisputed global benchmark for creative excellence since 1954, celebrating ideas that grow businesses, build iconic brands, and shift culture. Industry players see winning the award as a career milestone that future-proofs a business’ growth and gives it global exposure. Every year, only a small percentage of works entered for the awards go on to win a Lion.
  This year, X3M Ideas, a leading creative agency became the first Nigerian and West African agency to win the highly coveted award. In this interview with ONYEDIKA AGBEDO, the Creative Director at X3M Ideas, Anthony Eigbe, speaks on how he led his team to achieve the feat, what it means for the Nigerian advertising industry, and the prospects of the firm going forward, among other issues

X3M Ideas recently won the highly coveted Cannes Awards. Broaden our understanding of this award and the category in which you won.
WELL, the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, as it is called in full, is the biggest and most prestigious advertising award in the world. It’s one of the highest honours that one can receive in the ad industry. So, winning a first-ever award, not only for Nigeria but for West Africa is no mean fit. 
  
X3M Ideas won in the Health and Wellness Category, which is of course one of the most contested categories. But with regards to the work that won, it was for a project we did for the people of Rivers State to support them in their ongoing battle with Soot. The campaign was titled, “The Soot Life Expectancy,” and it used critical soot data obtained by the German Environmental Protection Agency, spanning 40 countries, to calculate and re-issue a new life expectancy based on time spent (inhaling soot) in Rivers State. The campaign’s main component was a website where visitors can visit, input their information and get real-time life expectancy results. The website was connected to LED Billboards in major states. So, when people checked their life expectancy, it popped up on those billboards for the world to see. Each person who checked their new life expectancy also had a letter sent on their behalf to 80+ senators urging them to take action and curb the soot epidemic.

How does this win feel?
It feels surreal! It’s an incredible honour to lead the core team that did this historic work. To have worked in advertising for a little over 10 years and then do something that hasn’t been done in 70 years gives one goose bumps just thinking about it. It’s nothing but a dream come true for me and I’m forever grateful to the team for their fearlessness and commitment to doing such important work for a vulnerable community. Special thanks to the client as well for being equally bold. And even bigger thanks to my boss, Steve Babaeko, for pushing us to execute great projects that resonate globally. It reinforces my long-held belief that creativity is indeed a tool to accelerate positive change.

What does this victory signify for X3m Ideas in particular, and Nigeria’s advertising industry in general?
It’s huge! First, it cements X3M Ideas as an agency with serious global potential, because as I said it’s us getting awarded on the global stage. A good comparison for the layman is that it’s like winning the Grammys. 
  
For clients and brands out there, it gives a resounding shot of confidence that we, as an industry, are indeed on the ascent and that we have what it takes to adapt to globalised thinking. It means that we can create work that shifts brands from local to global and vice versa; ‘glocal’ if you like.
  
In terms of the broader impact within our industry, this feat puts the global spotlight on Nigerian advertising. Brands from all over the globe can now rest assured that Nigerian agencies can indeed think with a global mindset even while being local. It also has serious ramifications for projecting our industry talents to the world. It breaks open the gates and gives us a seat at the table. Think about this, X3M Ideas competed against over 1200 entries from around the world in the Health and Wellness Category and won. 

How do you think the Nigerian ad industry can sustain the momentum that has come with this award?
The door has been opened, and the barrier removed. X3M Ideas has shown the possibility of what can be done and brought the global spotlight to Nigeria and West Africa. I believe this will spur all agencies and clients to rethink how marketing communications is done, and how we can tweak it to stand out for the better. 
  
This win also emboldens agencies to also always put their best foot forward every time they go to a client in the hope that they can get outstanding work through the door. This is just the beginning; the client-agency relationship now has a bigger reason to work together for an impact that can be global, not just local.

What more should Nigerians expect from your team?
Doing it once is great, repeating the feat is legendary. My biggest assignment as the Creative Director at X3M Ideas is clear – to lead creativity and innovation that is consistent with X3M Ideas’ goal of being first, a strong continental player, and eventually a dominant global powerhouse. This is a huge leap in the right direction. Even though we are headquartered in Lagos, we have offices across Africa and Dubai. So, we are poised to truly consolidate this achievement in our ascent to penetrating the global space.

Can you share with us the process of creating the campaign that won you this prestigious award? 
It wasn’t smooth. As I said earlier, the idea is based on using statistics to determine, to re-issue a life expectancy based on time spent in a soot-infested location. It’s almost like what the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) scientists do to determine life expectancy and advise governments around the world.
  
Getting to do that as an agency with limited human capital, and for a client with even more limited financial capital is not an easy thing. Obtaining hard data from an institution like the Environmental Protection Agency of Germany takes time. Processing that data, cross-referencing it with the air quality index of Rivers State, tracking the year’s soot, acquiring the email addresses of 80+ senators, building a website that is responsive and lots more weren’t easy. It’s one complex ball of science with so many moving parts and we converted it into a social campaign. We did a thing! Cheers to the team, and cheers to X3M Ideas!

How did you come up with something that bold and technical?
Well, we visited Port Harcourt to shoot a documentary on the same issue, and while we watched the clips of people talking about their plight, we realised that while most of the residents knew soot was bad, they didn’t know just how bad it was affecting their lives. But if you turn to the studies, you would quickly see that soot is a latent form of gas poisoning. Soot, especially in Port Harcourt, sometimes reaches a level 40 times worse than the WHO’s guide for 24-hour exposure. 
  
So, we thought, why not show people exactly how soot impacts their lives, or more correctly, shortens their lives, this is on top of Nigeria’s life expectancy, which is already short at 53.
  
The team gathered around this thinking and ended up producing what we did. I need to especially thank the team leads on this – Kelechi Uduma; Samuel Oluwagbemi; Oladunni Williams; Sodiq Sheu; Pelumi and the rest of the team. Well done guys, we did it!

Creativity is not an easy exercise. How did you build yourself into the creative guru you have become today?
I won’t call myself a guru per se; I’m just an experienced creative who strongly believes creativity can cause global acceleration for local businesses.
I think my career path has also contributed a lot to that. I’ve worked through the main facets of marketing communications; what you would call ATL, BTL, and digital in our industry. This simply means I’ve done experiential (activations, events, etc). I have studied and have a diploma in digital marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). I have done a lot of work in core advertising in some of the biggest agencies on this side of the world. All that has shaped me and led to this moment. So, I’m super glad for my experiences.

What advice do you have for upcoming creatives in the ad industry?
Creativity never ends. Nothing is ever finished. Keep on striving to be great one step at a time. Exposure is also great and it doesn’t have to be expensive. There’s a whole catalogue of great works online covering every field of creativity; check out those works. Beyond that, understand why those works are great and what makes them exactly great. If you can’t get physical access to a mentor, then follow them online and get obsessed with their work. For me, it’s a repetitive exposure to what is great. Sooner than later, that greatness will start to become a habit for you. It’s work; it takes time, but it’s worth it all the time.