Marketing Chose Me

Okwuoma Onwuani, a graduate of Theatre Arts, heads the marketing department of Light-Level Ltd. Like most people, she wanted to practice her course of study but couldn’t. Her dream was doing Life Arts, a dream that has not come to pass. Presently, she is hooked to marketing, which she has found rewarding. She has also come to believe that she was cut out for marketing. In a chat with Blessing Nwobodo, she speaks on some of the challenges facing the Signage industry in Nigeria.

My name is Okwuoma Onwuanyi. I studied Theatre Arts at the University of Benin (Uniben). I work with Light Level Ltd in the marketing department as Head of Marketing.

I have been in marketing for quite a while; since I left school. I didn’t set out to be a Marketer; I read Theatre Arts and I had plans of practicing my profession after school. The Theatre Arts profession then wasn’t as well organized like what we have now (I mean the movie industry).

However, I was more interested in live-theatre and, like you know, that is not a segment of the profession that has really taken-off. As a result, I found myself getting involved in a sales job as a starter. From being a sales representative, I moved on to an advert representative position, before getting hooked by the marketing profession and deciding to pursue it actively.

Marketing has paid off in a lot of ways; it has been an interesting journey so far. It has been both challenging and rewarding in the sense that it has offered me an opportunity of being versatile. You meet a lot of people and interact with them; you learn a lot from them and most of the times, on the job, you find yourself in different sections of the market where you need to learn about the products. I once sold computers as a marketer and within the period I got to know a lot about computers and the ICT world.

Now I am in signage which is a whole new world from the computer industry where I moved from. The signage industry has shown me different aspects of things going on around me that I didn’t know existed. I now look at things that have to do with branding; I seek how to physically express people’s brands – visual communication in its entirety – and I enjoy every bit of it.

People say they chose their career; but I would say that marketing chose me. I think that, somehow, I have the natural ability to fit into the profession and as soon as I found out that I had passion for it, I kept moving along with it. When I finally did my MBA at Ife, it was a conscious decision to specialize in Marketing.

The signage industry is capital intensive, especially at the level at which we operate. You need to have enough resources especially in the areas of technology, machinery and physical space, as evidenced in our factory, because we equally manufacture. There is also the problem of getting skilled personnel to man the machines. It’s been challenging getting people to realize that the sign maker is a professional and not a street corner business man. Brand owners need to take their brands very seriously because when the chips are down, it is the brands that matter. However, amidst these challenges, we have been able to educate brand owners on the need to make sure that brands are properly and professionally implemented in the physical aspect. A proper visual representation of the brand counts a lot.

Professionally I am looking forward to a time when we can produce practically every aspect of signage right here in Nigeria; a time when we will not have technical dependence outside Nigeria; a time when we can make choices and explore visual communication in its entirety. The signage industry is a dynamic industry with so many aspects gradually being shaped and I am excited to be a part of the development process.