Steve Baba-Eko Expanding Creativity

Steve Babaeko gives dreadlocked men a good name. Even if unaware of who he is, on meeting him, it is unlikely you would ascribe to him the behavioural stereotypes dreadlocked men are burdened by. He says his dreadlocks make him standout. And standout he does, not just for the hair on his head but for the work of his hands. For the past 20 years, he has built an enviable career that has in the past few, led up to him running his own company, X3M Ideas. Earlier this year, he was the only Nigerian advertising practitioner selected to be a juror at the New York Advertising Festival, an international award competition that rewards the world’s best work in advertising. At the 2015 edition of the Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival Awards, his firm won eight awards. His second love and venture is music. To this end, he set up X3M Music to discover and promote musical talent. He has stayed true to his word, with the label producing 2016’s breakout star - Simi. Also on the label’s roster is Praiz, who is arguably Nigeria’s foremost R&B artist. Babaeko is not only doing well, but he is doing good. Through some corporate social responsibility initiatives, he has given back; providing school renovations at Opebi Junior High School, Awuse Estate, Opebi, and Special Correctional Centres for Boys in Oregun; donating ICT equipment to Oregun Senior High School, Oregun and Community High School, Wasimi, Maryland. He was recently recognized for this by the world’s leading luxury whiskey through its ‘Win the Right Way’ campaign, that celebrates those who have excelled in their field of endeavour and have touched lives in the process. In all of this, he finds time to find knowledge. He is an alumni of Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University training programs, to list a few. In this interview with Style Correspondent Ayodeji Rotinwa, a generous offering of lessons and experience, he paints a picture of how a creative life is best lived...

I stumbled in the first few months, trying to convince myself I could do Advertising: dealing with pressure from clients, deadlines and at the same time coming up with quality ideas. It can really stretch you. It is not the kind of environment that your ideas have the luxury of gestating. Speed is of the essence.

You decided to go into advertising based on an interview you read with the MD of an advertising agency and his explaining of how company staff is taken care of, well paid. Would you say your career started off by chance then?

Yes, advertising was something I stumbled on. I used to go to the Kaduna library to read about advertising, what departments advertising companies had, where I could fit in and that was where I stumbled on copywriting. I felt since I was a member of the Creative Writers’ Club at the Ahmadu Bello University, where I studied, I thought, ‘I can do this’. I started giving myself imaginary briefs. But before all of that happened, I did not know anything about advertising as a labour-hiring sector of the economy. However, I have always loved commercials. Growing up, there was no commercial on radio or TV that I wouldn’t sing along to, even though I didn’t know anything about advertising. So between that and my creative background, I think it was a natural marriage and that’s what I have done all my life now and I don’t think I can do anything else.

Speaking of something else, in past interviews, you said you once loved and considered going into broadcasting but ultimately decided it wasn’t a financially viable option. In light of this, what would you say to the 20-something year old who was in your shoes all those years ago, still trying to figure out what he/she wants to do. Should they find something financially safe now or dig in their heels, do something they have a passion for in the hope that, it would be financially rewarding eventually?

It’s a tightrope to walk to be honest. As at the time, I made my own decision, seeing how poor my family was, I had no choice but to go for the financially viable option. It just so happened to be something I also had passion for. I would advise that you go for something you are passionate about. I can talk about broadcasting not being financially rewarding but then you have people like John Momoh who has turned out to be a fantastic entrepreneur and still in the same field of broadcasting. There are many examples you could give of thoroughbred broadcasters who have gone on to make something fantastic of it. In Nigeria, we have this mentality about money which you can understand because of upbringing or because how poor you can really be if you are called poor in Nigeria. But if you focus on the things you are passionate about, you may never have to worry about making money because money will follow it. The time and brain cells you are burning trying to think about how much money you want to make; if you turned it towards amplifying what you are already doing, in the spot where you have passion, believe me you will see how quick money is going to come calling. So I recommend, for young people who are still confused, follow your passion. Sometimes, you want to follow the money and when you don’t get it, it’s double jeopardy for you. You are doing something you don’t like. And you don’t make the money. Let us assume you don’t make money from doing something you have passion for, at least, you would have done something you loved.

If the vein of your explanation, going back to all those years ago, advertising was something you loved but if it didn’t pay well – at least initially at the time - would you still have taken it on?

That’s a tough question. It would have been a true test of my love for advertising. Funny enough, when I joined advertising, at the first company I worked for, it wasn’t all that rosy. I was not making that much money. I got my employment letter and on paper, it looked like a lot of money but by the time the Finance department broke it down to me… (sighs) Then I was squatting at a hotel in Mile 2. My office was in Shonibare Estate. Between jumping buses back and forth in Oshodi, I realised that my money was gone. Every month it wasn’t enough. However, I was enjoying myself. I stumbled in the first few months, trying to convince myself I could do Advertising: dealing with pressure from clients, deadlines and at the same time coming up with quality ideas. It can really stretch you. It is not the kind of environment that your ideas have the luxury of gestating. Speed is of the essence. After those first few months, however, I realized I loved the business and it closed my mind to the not-so-good salary I had to endure for the first five years of my career.

Till date, what is your favourite part of the job, still, after all these years?

Creating. Creating a new campaign, pitching for a new business, anything that has to do with creating is where my passion still is. The fact that you are a C.E.O. does not mean anything. I roll up my sleeves when I need to, contribute ideas. If I really love the brief, I beg my people to let me take a shot at it.

A creative career can mean unending hours. You are married to a creative like yourself. How do you both negotiate functions like taking the kids to school, policing homework?

Division of labour. It has been challenging but negotiating those duties upfront has helped us to find balance. I always drop the kids at school and she picks them up. She oversees homework. I am not sure any of my boys want me there at the table for that. But I support that as well. Even if it is as little as giving our boys the evil eye when they are not concentrating. I get called upon to render that sort of housekeeping service…

Have you both had the opportunity to work together?

Yes, she has a brilliant, creative mind. It is great to bounce ideas off her. We worked together on the very first telecommunication account (MTS Wireless) I ever had when I was working in my former agency before setting up my own. I had the idea for a monochrome ad that would have a touch of red. At the time, all the other telcos had taken up other colours and were very entrenched in the market so was difficult finding something for this small company that was not yet playing in that GSM market. I had to ask my wife, Yetunde, to help execute the ad, and it turned out to be an iconic, successful campaign.

How do you personally compete, to make sure that whatever you do, X3M is ahead of the curve?

By reinventing myself. Technology is driving us at a crazy speed. It is making things difficult. What is hot today is going to be obsolete in six months. So one has keep updating himself and getting in tune with now.

What would you say is your favourite ad of all time?

I have to be selfish and pick one X3M created. I think the Francis Odega, ‘Gerrahere’ one for Etisalat is my favourite. It was local and almost everyone could relate to it. The kind of talk it created was very impressive.

We knew the button we pressed with that one but we didn’t know how big it would be. Francis Odega at the time was viral online. 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg had put him up. He has been acting since 1995 but very few people knew him in the real world so what we did was a marriage of the cyber world and real world.

How do you then find young, fresh talent especially in a field as yours that thrives on youth, creativity?

The university is a great place. There are a couple of people who work with me now that are products of me going to universities and speaking at creative workshops. We pick the cream of the crop there, take them and try to introduce them to the advertising business. A couple of people have come up via that channel. Beyond that, we have creative academies in Nigeria. Some of them want internships for their students here and we provide that and find talent that way as well. The umbrella body for advertising in Nigeria is also coming up with a creative academy and I’m sure we will be able to find talent there as well.

Shifting gears a bit, what informed your diversifying into the music industry with a record label, X3M Music?

A couple of things. When I was 15, I met with two friends Kayode and Jide Roland. They had just relocated from Lagos and wanted us to all start this band called,‘The Music Army’, even though I couldn’t sing or play any instrument. I soon became consumed by the passion for music. My mum reminded me that there was no musician in our lineage and ordered me to no longer hang out with them. I think it was a service to the nation because I would have been a big embarrassment. Later, when I relocated from Kaduna to Lagos, in 1996, I met Dede Mabiaku. About three years later, he just drove into my agency and announced that he had left his manager and that I was going to start managing him. I was like, “Are you crazy, I don’t know anything about managing!” and he insisted that I would get the hang of it. That was how I became his manager for two years even though I wasn’t getting paid and still had my day job. I picked up experience doing that and it made me understand that there was a space to work on and make a difference in the music industry. Finally, my former boss had a stake in a record label. He came to me asking for a presentation for the label, to see where they could improve. I presented to the board, developing a 3-year rolling plan to turn the business around and charged N5M. I got a call back from them saying they loved the idea but they could only pay N250,000. I wasn’t even upset. I asked them to take the presentation for free and told them I would contribute to the execution for free if they needed my help. But I later thought about their counter-offer. The presentation looked nice on paper but I hadn’t done it before for them to be confident enough to give me the money I was asking. That same day, I called the lawyer and registered my music business. Today, X3M music is one of the top six labels in the country.

What is your vision for your music label and/or how labels should be run?

Quite a number of things work against the record label business in Nigeria. The ecosystem and infrastructure you need to run a record label aren’t well designed. There is no solid distribution system, for instance. However, you can still keep the business going. For me, my passion is this: seeing talents you know and connected with, listened to for the first time, believing that they are the next big star; very few people feel the same and even they doubt themselves but you believe and push and eventually it happens. There is nothing more spiritually fulfilling than this, seeing them go from being unknown to being stars. I always tell my talents, I am doing this for two reasons. Either I am making loads of money or having loads of fun. I know because of the ecosystem we may not be able to make too much money but I am enjoying it. When people ask me, ‘What kind of music do you look out for when you want to sign an artist?’ my standard answer is I don’t know. It’s a God-feel thing.

Do you think the music business is one that eventually can be financially rewarding?

Yes, music is such a powerful platform. There are people building careers off successful artistes’ careers. One successful artist will have a road manager, business manager and so on. Music is an industry any government should pay attention to. Our industry has grown in spite of lack of support from the government. If you want to reduce unemployment, it is in areas of music and sport that can be done because young people can grow and pull up other young people. If you create one Davido, you are taking 30/ 40 young men off the street. You create a Praiz, you can take 10 people off the street. There are careers to be built off the back of these artistes’ success.

For creative careers in general, adjudging a standard of compensation has always been difficult. What do you think of this problem and how can it be solved?

In advertising, it’s a lot easier. You have the option to bill the client to put you on retainer. You can use the FTE model (Full Time Equivalent) which is that: if you put six people on the team, to work on the business, you can use the model to calculate how much earned, how much time they have dedicated to the business and then you can bill as overhead costs accordingly. Beyond that, if you are unable to create that kind of system, how much is a good creative worth? Nobody can put a price tag on that. Most of the time, the creative will be holding the short end of the stick. Yes, you have created this idea that may even have the power to revolutionize a whole industry but how do you get paid for it? You have to find a way because clients will always need creative support and creative people need an industry to operate in so it is about negotiating and meeting each other halfway.

Do you use this system in your own business?

Yes, when you run this kind of business, you need systems. You need to create systems that would be independent of you, from human resources, to rewarding and incentivizing staff, to drive growth of your organization. I see people wanting to set up businesses but not systems. Systems power the business. If you don’t have these, you’re bound to fail. That’s why so many SMEs in Nigeria fail. There’s statistics that say 1 in 10 SMEs created fail. The reason why the rate of closure is so high is sometimes they want to cut corners and not lay foundations but you must.

Would you agree that there’s no ideal age to start a business, as you started yours at 41, or you reckon you maybe should have started sooner?

I think I am a late starter but there’s no ideal age, really. Age is secondary. A situation has been created now where people say, “If Steve can do it, so can I.” and I am very flattered by this but the discipline required to be an entrepreneur is a lot. If you are not able to be disciplined to manage people, clients, talents, money… If you are the type that that can’t manage success, you can be a danger to yourself and a danger to your business because how do you keep your feet on the ground and still remain humble and hungry. Even when you are in business for yourself, if you can’t like this: if I don’t do my job, I’m going to get fired, then you have a problem. That’s what wakes me up in the morning. We resume at 8.30AM and I know I have to be here.

Considering all your accomplishments and success, what would you still consider a challenge, something you would like to take on, that you haven’t done yet?

I’d like to take on project Brand Nigeria. The government has tried a couple of times but it generally hasn’t ended up anywhere. I would prefer to avoid words like ‘rebranding’. It is not about rebranding but creating a brand out of this highly misunderstood country called Nigeria. We must be one of the most maligned countries in the world asides from North Korea. It has to be a hammer and anvil approach, clearing misconceptions both within and outwardly. For instance, some people feel they are marginalised, that a certain group thinks it is their birth right to rule the country. Almost every group or section in this country feels marginalised in some way. And outwardly, in any typical airport, when they find out you are Nigerian, and for someone like me, when they see you have dreadlocks, they immediately think you are either carrying drugs or a 419er and set you aside. I am always mentally prepared to be searched. However, there’s something very powerful about being a Nigerian. Being able to build it as a brand, show the world what it is, with all the contradictions and our promise as a people… Nigeria is the kind of place where a person like me can quit his job at 41, build a new business, and still be alive in 2016 to tell the story. There are powerful stories to unearth in each of us. I look forward to the opportunity to be part of a team that would showcase all of this.

However, there’s something very powerful about being a Nigerian. Being able to build it as a brand, show the world what it is, with all the contradictions and our promise as a people. Nigeria is the kind of place where a person like me can quit his job at 41, build a new business, and still be alive in 2016 to tell the story.