By Tayo Odunlami

Some 28 years ago, a 35-year-old top hand at Grant Advertising concluded he was no longer getting any challenges at the then third leading advertising agency in Nigeria. Biodun Shobanjo, erstwhile Deputy Managing Director at Grant, felt its employers were lacking the ambition to topple the two market leaders, Lintas and Ogilvy, Benson & Mather. Which was unacceptable. To Shobee, as Shobanjo is called, “winning is not everything; it is the only thing.”

Shobanjo would not be contented with being No 2, or even the Chief Executive Officer at a third rate ad agency. He was focused on only one direction; the acme. So focused, the advert agent realised there was only one way to attain that height. In December 1979, he left Grant. On 2 January 1980, Shobanjo, together with five aides he poached at Grant, founded a new agency, Insight Communication Limited, at 1 Calabar Street, Lagos. Insight’s pioneer staff totalled 18 and had a billing of only N15,000.

Shobanjo had identified his destination in the industry before he set up shop and was determined to get there. The beginning was rough but he trudged on. He decided he had to carve an image for Insight that would distinguish it from the old pack. A departure from the dull, laid-back advert executive, Shobanjo emerged an unconventional, brash, aggressive, daring and innovative advert sheikh. To Shobanjo, it was advertising unusual.

His style of doing business initially attracted odium from rival advert agencies which frowned at what they perceived as his somewhat unusual extent to win accounts. Insight’s philosophy has been “thinking global, yet acting local.” Within one year in business, the company had firmly announced its presence. Its billings had shot up to N1.5 million. The following year, Shobanjo put into effect the “thinking global” vision when Insight was affiliated with Ted Bates, an advert agency that later became a part of Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide.

Shobanjo was only too glad to take Insight to the Saatchis whose business philosophy perfectly dovetails into his. To both Shobanjo and the Saatchis (Charles and Maurice), “the first position is wonderful, second is terrific, third is threatened and fourth is fatal.”

The association has been rewarding. Insight leads the local marketing communications industry which has flourished since Shobanjo showed the way that indigenous ownership can flaunt a quality that can match foreign competition. By the time Insight celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1990, its billings had leapt up to N53.9 million. The figures have since multiplied and Insight is credited with being the first Nigerian ad agency to cross the N400 million mark in billings. By the end of last year, the figure was estimated to be over N800 million, with more than 30 blue-chip companies in its books.

Shobanjo has since diversified to build a business empire, the Troyka Group. The body includes The Quadrant Company, a public relations outfit; MC & A, an advertising agency; Optimum Exposures, an outdoor advertising company; All Seasons MediaCom, a media buying company; African Barter Company, a television marketing distribution firm and Halogen, a security company. The Troyka Group is worth about N20 billion in assets.

In December 2004, he stepped down as Managing Director of Insight Communications after handing over to his successor, Jimi Awosika, a long-time associate since the Grant days. He remains Chairman of the Troyka Group.

Shobanjo was born on 24 December 1944 in Jebba, Kwara State where Joseph, his father, worked with the Nigeria Railway Corporation. He had primary education at St. Patrick’s Catholic School, Jebba, Kwara State; St. George’s Anglican School, Zaria and finally, Ijero Baptist School, Apapa Road, Ebute-Metta, Lagos. He attended Odogbolu Grammar School, Ijebu-Odogbolu, Ogun State.

He was employed by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, now the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, in 1964 as a Studio Manager and left in 1971 as a producer. Shobanjo is a member of the Institute of Public Relations, London; Chartered Institute of Marketing, England and International Advertising Association. He is also a fellow and former member of the Governing Council of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria; fellow of the Commonwealth Journalists Association and a past president of the Association of Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria.