SPACE banks on data-driven advertising for West Africa brands

Brands’ relevance in the digital age could depend on how much they understand the changing taste of the demographics they plan to sell to. SPACE, a strategy agency based in Amsterdam last launched its West African office in Lagos Nigeria and is planning to leverage big data analysis to help brands in the region stay competitive and scale.

The company also recently conducted a Youth Opinion Report which it said will give major brands insight into the behavior of millennials population in Nigeria.

“We want to be the agency that knows Africa, which is why we launched our Youth Opinion Report,” Frances Eze, country manager, SPACE Nigeria said at the launch of the company’s office in Lagos. “Our results are driven by hard core data. We keep pushing and continue to interrogate.”

While presenting the report on Nigerian millennials, Johan Prins, director of strategy, SPACE noted that most brands fail to realize that while fundamental human nature has not changed, the way they express that nature has changed.

SPACE approach to advertising, he noted, is not to assume it knows what people want, “We go out and we ask them about it.”

For instance, the Youth Opinion Report on Nigerian millennials found that people in this age bracket are concerned when things are going wrong in the economy. This is unlike popular notions that seem to suggest millennials only care about adopting and playing with new technological innovations. Issues such as unemployment, slow growth in economy, marriage and belief in God fall among major concerns.

A statement from SPACE noted that it offers a full scope of services such as media and strategy to creative, PR and client service as well as production to its clients. Its model allows every team member to get started on a job at the same time, instead of being briefed at different phases, allowing for a more seamless and effective solution.

SPACE also said it provides clients with the right solutions and the right people at the right cost.

“It is difficult to commoditize the services ad agencies provide to their clients, because we do not provide identical, comparable units of service,” Eza said. She adds that one would never look for the cheapest doctor in the neighbourhood, and that the same preference for quality increasingly applies when clients look to services from agencies. “Our job is to change or reinforce human behavior. Essentially clients are buying experitise and when it comes to expertise, all things are not equal,” she noted.