The world is caught up in the fever of creating brands, through conscious and unconscious branding and rebranding. While some entities are successful, others post dismal results mainly due to ignorance and haphazard implementation.
Linus Idahosa
A brand is birthed when contact and experiences are associated with a service, person, or entity, to the extent that a relationship occurs between the product and the customer.
This is founded on gratifying contact and experiences, which reinforce the need for further contacts and experiences to be established with the product, entity, or person.
Onyigbuo Uche, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Calabar (UNICAL), Cross River State, said “a brand is a distinctive mark of quality, an assurance, a promise, and an experience attached to a product, service, entity, or person, to distinguish it from other competing products, to give clients and customers a platform to access the product, services, or entity that best satisfies their aspirations and expectations, vis-a-vis competing products or services.”
How film making can help bolster nation brand was discussed recently at the Del-York Creative Academy workshop in Lagos. Besides football, Nollywood and music are the most potent brands representing Nigeria abroad.
With the theme, ‘Film Making as a Tool for Nation Building’, the founder of the Del-York Creative Academy, Linus Idahosa, said the idea was to ensure that professionals are empowered to make films that could reposition the country in the global creative industry space.
His words: “The intention is to arm these people with the knowledge and tools to improve on the quality of movies produced by them. It will be interesting to see what their final project would be look like. We want to see what kind of testimony would come out of this four-week project.”
Wikipedia defines films as cultural artefacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating or indoctrinating citizens.
The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Films are the most influential medium in the society today. Without a word of dialogue, images rendered on a screen can evoke many different emotional responses.
Experts have called on the government to use the motion picture industry to launder the image of the country abroad through international rebranding and diplomacy.
The Head of Student Affairs, Del-York Creative Academy, Jide Johnson, told the participants that the ability to adapt to an environment and use it to design what is needed for students is paramount.
“For instance,” he explained, “there will be tailors to sew Nigerian dresses for a typical Nigerian film set. The other day one of the lecturers asked me to take pictures of a typical Nigerian wedding to serve as a guide for a movie set.”
Johnson, who cited some success stories recorded by Del-York Creative Academy, added that “we are on the verge of berthing a new film industry. Some of our students like Emma Edosio and James Omokwe are doing good short films for television stations like Ebonylife TV.
“Another one, Tonye Faloughi shot the first matinee advert in Nigeria after participating in the 2010 training programme. We have one student who is part of the cast for GidiUp on Ndani TV.
“The success story keeps growing by the day. This is why we think we should continue to pursue excellence in churning out the next generation of film makers in Nigeria.”
Experts in the creative industry have been in the vanguard for local movies to be used as a rebranding platform. By output, Nollywood is rated third in the world after Hollywood (United States) and Bollywood (India).