GDM, one of the leading experiential marketing agencies in Nigeria has unveiled its new logo to reflect the new core of its business. The unveiling ceremony also saw the company flag off the celebrations of its 10th anniversary, in addition to the commissioning of a CSR project which it did at the Gbagada Comprehensive Junior High School located directly opposite its head office in Gbagada, Lagos State.
As clearly and boldly indicated by the new logo, the company is moving from being a marketing operations company to a group of companies that focuses on marketing and innovation, primarily.
Explaining the motive behind the new logo, the founder and Group Managing Director of the company, Victor Afolabi, in an interview said: “The unveiling is not just about logo; but it’s about the core of our business, our business DNA, for short.”
He further stated that the company, which was founded in 2010 as a Below the Line (BTL) experiential marketing agency, had, in 2015, evolved into a marketing operations company in line with the demands of its clients; a factor which he said was also responsible for its new evolution.
In his words: “This Company was founded in 2010 simply as a BTL experiential marketing agency. But between 2014-2015, the clients were asking for more. They were no longer interested in an agency that would just take the brief and run around directly marketing to people. They were looking for an agency which would offer a 360-degree marketing operation; an agency that could look at the numbers and analyse the numbers, etc.
“And because of what they were asking for, the kind of people that we were recruiting, and the kind of services which we were offering needed to change. And you noticed that in the amount of money those clients were ready to spend around that sector.”
Speaking further, the group boss noted: “Clients wanted an adaptation of their creatives; they wanted you to understand the digital and to know where PR fits in. In short, clients did not want you to be just an ordinary experiential agency anymore. As such, by 2015, we became a marketing operations agency. The difference resides in the fact that marketing operations agencies take a lot into cognizance about Return on Investment (ROI) and a lot about the growth and the numbers. So, that became our focus and the very core of our business had to change.”
Giving his organisation’s reason for celebrating, Afolabi emphasised that the 10th anniversary was to reappraise the group’s performance and raise the bar, not just in terms of marketing communications but marketing in all its ramifications.
“We want to use the occasion of this celebration to reassess what marketing should be and what the total concept of innovation and agency business should be in the future. Being among the top market leaders, we should be at the forefront of driving the change and the narratives about the future. We have raised the bar in the practice, in activation and in the offerings in the marketing space.
“The celebration is also to show that we have not taken for granted God’s grace which has been more than sufficient for us, including our clients who have trusted us so much. And some our staff who have been with us since inception,” he said.
On hand to do the unveiling of the logo and the commissioning of the CSR project was Segun Fafore, the Executive Assistant to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State on New Media and Public Relations, who represented the Governor.
Fafore commended Afolabi and his team for seeing the future and bringing it forward. He submitted that the group’s CSR investment in education was very much in tandem with the vision and commitment of the Sanwo-Olu administration in Lagos State which had not only increased budget allocation to Education, but had also launched an initiative tagged Eko Excel, meaning Excellence in Child Education and Learning.
He congratulated the students who, he said were lucky to have technology-driven education which is giving them a better take-off in life than the older generations.
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