The Future Creative Leaders Academy (FCLA) is a Pitcher Festival platform that brings together students from several tertiary institutions for seminars, screening and workshops conducted by a faculty of industry experts. The FCLA serves as an early immersion for the students into the competitive world of advertising. They also get the opportunity to work on briefs individually and in teams, after which they partake in test prepared by APCON to evaluate their general understanding of advertising.
The registration for FCLA 2020 began on October 14, 2019. This year, the Academy had 44 students from 13 APCON-accredited universities and tertiary institutions from across Nigeria.
THE COMPETITIONS
There are two major competitions open to participants for the Future Creative Leaders Academy. The winner of the first competition gets a scholarship to the Roger Hatchuel Academy in Cannes, France; while the second competition qualifies the winner to represent their country at the next Dubai Lynx Festival.
The competition brief for the Roger Hatchuel Academy Scholarship was sent on January 6, 2020. The students were asked to produce a 2-minute video that demonstrates their creativity and suitability to attend the Roger Hatchuel Academy.
The second competition brief was sent on March 1, 2020. The brief required the students to create a powerful intervention idea for Creating a Better Africa that addresses the issues responsible for educational marginalization in Nigeria, and that will enable more children go to school. Each student was expected to work with a supervising lecturer. The submission deadline for this brief was March 14, 2020.
THE JURORS
The entries for the FCLA competition were judged by Kayode Olowu, Founder and creative director ONEWILDCARD, Baruch Apata Lead Copywriter Livespot 360, Ayotunde Ishola, Associate creative director DDB Lagos,Susan Aniche, Team director IMS Advertising, Bolanle Akintomide Head of Production, Up In The Sky and Omokehinde Thomas Business Lead, Red Wolf under the observation of the 2020 Academy Dean, Lampe Omoyele, Managing Director Nitro 121, Lagos.
THE SEMINARS
The FCLA seminars started on June 15, 2020 with the Dean of the FCLA, in the person of Lampe Omoleye, Managing Director at Nitro 121 speaking on “The Future of Advertising and Your Place in It”. He showed the students what the future of intelligent advertising & marketing will require, which are skilled marketing teams that will interpret data, engage with customers and communicate the latest marketing trends in order to develop effective marketing strategy. He then showed the students how to effectively hone their skills in order to be prepared for the future of advertising. Lampe Omoyele concluded his session encouraging the students to never stop learning.
This was followed by a session with the Deputy Creative Director of X3M Ideas, Ifeanyi Dibia on “Creativity, Storytelling and Originality.” He mentioned that advertising creativity is the ability to generate fresh, unique, and appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to communication problems. Ifeanyi also added that original ads comprise elements that are rare or surprising , or that move away from the obvious and commonplace.
The seminars for the first day ended with Richard Salvador, Co-founder of Digisplash, in a presentation titled “Will AI reduce the level of human creativity?” He explained Artificial Intelligence, highlighting the different milestones of AI from 1964 to 2011, and the differences between AI and human intelligence. He then showed how AI can and will be used to assist and enhance the power of human intelligence, and not reduce or replace it.
The next day, June 16, 2020, Baruch Apata, Founder& Lead Creative at Beckhurst PSL, led a session on “Opportunity in Every Brief”. He defined the word ‘opportunity’ in context, and encouraged the students to prepare themselves for opportunities by exercising their brains, being adventurous, reading good books not just self-help books, and listening to good music. He also explained what a brief is, and gave different tips to approaching a brief.
The last session was titled “The Truth Will Set Your Creativity Free” by BalogunToheeb who is the Founder & Lead Creative at Beckhurct PSL. During his session he explained the role of creativity in advertising, the definition of truth in context, and the power of truth in unleashing creativity.
All seminars were held online.
THE WINNERS
For the Roger Hatchuel Academy Scholarship Competition, after the first round of judging, 3 nominees were shortlisted They were:
Chibuike Daniel Eze, Babcock University.
Edidiong Godwin Eton, Pan-Atlantic University.
Michelle Eseoghene, Caleb University.
These nominees were forwarded to the Cannes Lions International Jury, which included Abraham Abbi Asefaw and Maksimillian Kallhed, Co-Founders of The Pop Up Agency and 3 additional jurors, to select the final winner.
And after that, Chibuike Eze from Babcock University emerged the overall winner of the 2020 Roger Hatchuel Academy Scholarship.
For the second competition, after judging sessions and the APCON test, the following five students were announced as the finalists:
Ayobami Olajide
Omolola Saka
Damilola Amisu
Jesimiel Williams
Racheal Balogun
They gathered again before the jurors for a final presentation of their work, and on July 4, 2020 Ayobami Olajide from Covenant University emerged the winner. He will be attending the next Dubai Lynx Festival, courtesy of APCON, and his school, Covenant University, was awarded FCLA's Best School of the Year 2020.
REACTIONS
"Getting courage to take the leap. That's how I would describe my FCLA experience. Deep down in our minds, we believe we can fly, but we often lack the courage to take the leap. The Future Creative Leaders Academy (FCLA) — "the courage academy" — was the platform for a lot of my colleagues and me to find that courage to take a leap into the world of possibilities. The FCLA presented an opportunity to learn from the industry's finest starting from the Dean, Mr. Lampe Omoyele, to a host of experts who taught insightfully on modules like storytelling, creative strategy, content creation, artificial intelligence & human creativity. The FCLA also had a lot of other exciting hands-on activities. The highlight of the event for me was networking with other future creative leaders and the pitch competition where we were tasked to offer innovative solutions to solve the out-of-school problem in Nigeria, and I clinched the prize to attend the Dubai Lynx festival. Like the jurors said during the pitch competition, and I reiterate, "This is a good start, and it can only get better from here."
I want to appreciate the organizers of the FCLA, Mr. Nnamdi Ndu, and every resource person that made this program memorable for us." - Ayobami Olajide
"This has been a real learning curve for me. I am eternally grateful for all the lessons learnt and skills acquired during these sessions. It all opened my mind to new perspectives of creativity and helped me become a better version of myself. Thank you FCLA ! " - Marie Therese Oke
"It was SO insightful. It helped me learn, develop skills, make friends, network and that’s just the least bit. I now value my role as a creative in the advertising industry even more. It really was fun being a part of the making of future Kings and Queens. Thank you FCLA! God bless you!" - Edidiong Eton
"The 2020 FCLA programme was a great experience for me as it gave me the opportunity to work on briefs, meet students from other schools and also work with them to provide possible solutions to the problems we have identified in our society. The training sessions were also very impactful as I was able to glean knowledge from the seasoned speakers. I'm happy the FCLA team found a way to make the programme happen despite the initial barrier posed by the pandemic. This is something I would like to be a part of again!" - Rachael Balogun
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