The Oracle Story
The sudden rise in the profile of Oracle Experience Limited is one of the recent breakthroughs in the experiential industry. The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Felix Eiremiokhae, in an interview with THISDAY shortly after his agency won the 2015 Marketing Edge Award in Lagos revealed that creativity and innovation were the main tools working for ‘Oracle brand. He described the new award as another booster for his team but pointed out that the agency will not allow complacency to set in because of the need to add value to client’s briefs.
Last year, the agency’s name readily came to mind whenever issues related to activation came up for discussion because of the outstanding briefs it executed. According to Eiremiokhae, the jobs didn’t come unnoticed but attracted laurels from various organisations.
“We handled quite a lot of outstanding jobs last year. Apart from that, we have also found ourselves deciding on the creative ladder we want to play and the choice to play in the groundbreaking side of the ladder. If you look at some great activation we have done such as Star Bottle Tree, Gulder re-launch, Gulder Yacht and Heineken Green Light Experience, all these were groundbreaking activations that left delighted consumers and brand owners,”
He however stated that executing groundbreaking activations doesn’t come without challenges. “Life itself is a huge challenge and what separates you from others and make you outstanding is how you are able to manage these challenges when they come your way. That’s why I keep telling people that they need to take risk to be able to stand out,”
Of all the challenges confronting agency owners, competing with oneself is what Oracle is contending with. This, according to Eiremiokhae explains why the company keeps doing things that had never been done in the industry, which often prompted clients to ask for more.
“What we do at Oracle is like a paint that has all the ideas but those ideas are inside of him. Therefore, trying to reinterpret those ideas sometimes could be really challenging. But the good thing is that clients are always patient with us and give us the opportunity to express our inner thoughts and that make it easy for us,”
Other challenges the agency head pointed out is budget and third party suppliers. “In our environment, budget can also be a very big issue. Another one is that man power and third party suppliers are still creating bottlenecks for practitioners. An agency like ours faces all these in delivering on many innovative brand engagement activations but somehow we have been able to keep satisfying our clients,”
Looking back into all the agency creations, the CEO said it has always been very difficult for him to say which of the jobs is most exciting. “I am always excited about all the works that we have done because the vibe and originality that go into each of them are all the unique in their own sense. So, all of them represent different things. If you look at Heineken Green Light Experience, the concept and ideation are totally different from the Star Bottle Tree. The concept of Gulder Yacht was equally very different from that of Gulder relaunch, the fact that the briefs were on the same brand notwithstanding,”
Of all the jobs, he singled out the Star Bottle Tree as one that could tickle the fancy of consumers. Indeed, giving the fact that the 36feets artificial tree attracted and broke the world record, one may not agree less.
“For us that was quite amazing and it got some international recognitions, one of which is creating a new record in the Guinness Book of Record as the tallest Christmas bottle tree in the continent. It was broadcast all over the world too,”
At nine, one may be tempted to ask where the inspiration is coming to the agency. Eiremiokhae said the team tries as a business organisation to see themselves as people who are driving the creativity process for the industry. “We take a lot of learning from how things are done globally, we try to expose ourselves through training and retraining and that has cost us so much and most time we try to think outside the box because that is the only thing that can keep you a step ahead the industry’s competition,”
“This is possible” he added, “because we enjoy the story we tell so for every opportunity we have been given we just want to tell those stories that can really make a brand feel that this is who we are and what we represent.”