Say “My friend Udeme is a great man” out loud in a gathering of pop culture-savvy Nigerian millennials—Gen Zs to a fair extent—to elicit at least one of three reactions: glimmers of recollection with smiles following, someone with an eidetic memory who completes the passage (“…when he was a boy, his teacher asked him where he dreamed of working.”), or a nostalgia-tinged conversation about TV adverts in the late 90s and 2000s. If you are lucky, you might experience all, as eager adults jostle to share their unique ties to one of Nigeria’s more iconic ads.
By November 2026, that ad will be two decades old. If the spot’s central character were to be a real person, he would probably have retired from his pilot heydays. He would have joined other iconic characters like Indomie’s Mama Do Good and Panadol Extra’s Oga Solo in this exit from active service. Characters who are iconic not just because of accompanying jingles, but because they resonated as more than mere caricatures of real people. Compared to many other Nigerian commercials, Guinness’ Udeme (real name: Sky) stands out for its narrative: of greatness being resident in every man, and the diligence to pursue a dream from childhood and bring it completion as one ages—an aspirational signpost. (Its use of the haunting harmonies of Kenyan singer Ayub Ogada’s Kothbiro (1993), also helped somewhat).
In a July 2016 article, Jide Alade, Brand Manager for Diageo’s Guinness marketing team when the ad was being developed in 2006, explained that the first time Udeme was shown to the team, ‘not many of the lads were sold on it’ as ‘it didn’t look like a great ad.’ The ad ended up being, arguably, the most memorable Guinness advert of the 21st century in Nigeria. As Udeme Ufot reminisced on the ad’s cultural impact in October 2025, via LinkedIn, one of the comments by another individual, Obinna Aniche, who also worked with SO&U as a Guinness Nigeria staff at the time, acknowledged that it won ‘numerous awards’ on its way to cementing itself in Nigeria’s history.
Two decades later, Vaseline’s The Nigerian Prince ad occupies a similar rarified air. Not so much in terms of popularity or comparable impact, but in the outstanding creativity that generated conversations about Nigerian commercials and went on to win major awards. The commercial builds on the infamous ‘Nigerian Prince e-mail scam’ that swept the West in the early days of the internet, contrasting this with Vaseline’s constant war against dupes of their products. Narrated by actor and real-life Nigerian prince, Chris Okagbue, it introduces the barcode addition to Vaseline Body Oils for consumers to certify original products, with the tagline “Don’t let fakes get under your skin, get the real Vaseline.” When it was released in April 2026, reactions—as with Guinness’ Udeme ad—were immediately overwhelmingly positive. Viewers applauded the striking production design, but more importantly, the messaging, repurposing such a negative stereotype in the interest of the product and Nigerians as a whole.
And when most thought that was all, it won ‘the’ major award, taking home 5 Lions at the 22-26 June 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world’s most prestigious awards for advertising and marketing campaigns (4 Bronzes in the Health and Wellness, Media, Brand Experience, and Social and Creator: Healthcare categories; 1 Gold in the Social and Creator: Collaboration category). Although the Lions were attributed to Leo Singapore, the Creative Agency behind the ad, other agencies involved in the process, including Nigerian organisations, Quadrant MSL (Nigerian PR), Publicis West Africa (Supporting Agency), All Seasons Zenith (Media), Ama Psalmist Visuals (Production), and Prodigious (Post-production), were also acknowledged for their contributions.
Within Nigeria’s branding sphere, the story on most lips was The Nigerian Prince director, Ibidunni Oladayo, whose celebratory announcement on the last day of the festival set off fireworks. For context, this isn’t the first time a Nigerian ad campaign has won a Cannes Lions medal. That door opened in 2023 when X3M ideas won Nigeria and West Africa’s first Cannes Lion trophy, Bronze in the Health & Wellness category, for their ‘Soot Life Expectancy’ campaign. The campaign was crafted for the Non-Profit, The Extra Step Initiative, and sought to highlight Port Harcourt’s soot crisis, which had surpassed the World Health Organisation’s 24-hour exposure guideline by a whopping 4000%.
It involved an interactive website and digital displays in 3 major Nigerian cities, showing people’s life expectancy due to the soot in the Rivers State capital. In 2025, German agency Serviceplan’s ‘Breastmilk Money’ campaign for Nigerian fintech, Herconomy, added three Silver Lions to the haul in the Creative Data, Direct, and Health and Wellness categories. ‘Breastmilk Money’ is itself a special savings account for mothers who breastfeed their babies, with a 14.3% per annum interest rate. The Nigerian Prince winning Gold was a step further up the ladder in terms of global recognition for Nigeria’s branding, marketing, and advertising subsector. A big deal in every sense, directed by a young man who has done everything from a Naira Marley music video to founding Cruise, a YouTube channel that hosts topical, sometimes controversial discussions on Nigerian culture.
When Oladayo spoke to Culture Custodian via WhatsApp, he was still riding on the high of the achievement—rightly so, considering the scale of impact. He wasn’t always a commercials and ads director, he started out sketching, explored photography while at Landmark University, and eventually found filmmaking as the most complete way to express his ideas. He studied at the MetFilm School, earning an MA in Cinematography and Film/Video production in June 2023, founded Cruise in November, alongside his by then 5-year practice as a filmmaker. But even early in his career, he already knew he wanted to direct commercials.
He elaborated, “I was fascinated by the challenge of telling a compelling story in 30 or 60 seconds, creating an entire world, communicating an idea, and holding people’s attention within such a short period. I’m also naturally curious and love solving mysteries. With films, documentaries, and music videos, you usually see the director’s name in the credits. Commercials were different: you would see an advert on television without knowing who created or directed it.” Oladayo tumbled down a rabbit hole of understanding how the industry worked. It was a confluence of everything he enjoyed, and as he understood more, he “fell in love.”
Photography taught him composition and how a single image can communicate an entire emotion. Music videos taught him visual freedom and how to build a world around an idea. Narrative filmmaking taught him character, tension, and emotional structure. His earlier branded content and commercial work taught him how to place all of that craft in service of a clear message.
On how the Cannes Lion-winning idea came to be, he explained that the concept was completely developed by Leo Singapore, who wanted to flip the global narrative of the term. His responsibility after receiving the script was to translate that idea into a film that felt ‘visually compelling, humorous, and, most importantly, culturally authentic.’ In his experience, certain concepts might be brilliant on paper, but within the Nigerian context, they have to be tailored for tone, performance, casting, production design, and camera language, among other things, to be authentic.
“I was involved in working out who could best carry the story, and Chris Okagbue was an incredible choice because he is both a real Nigerian prince and an accomplished actor. He understood the humour, but he could also communicate the seriousness underneath it,” he shared, adding that “We also had to determine what the visual world should look like, what the Prince’s office would feel like, how regal it should be and how to make it distinctly Nigerian without turning it into a caricature.” Authenticity was both a primary and secondary concern for all parties involved.
This emphasis on authenticity might seem like a minutiae, but it’s essential to understanding why the handling of the concept received so much praise from Nigerian creatives. It wouldn’t be the first time creatives have tried to redirect the narrative around this particular ‘scam’. In 2018, New York-based writer and director Friday Okoro released Nigerian Prince, a film about a Nigerian-American teenager seeking their way back to America by working with an internet scammer, after being sent back to Nigeria indefinitely by his mother—influenced by the director’s experience with similar email fraud and surprise relocation incidents.
The film was made courtesy of the inaugural AT&T Untold Stories Grant in partnership with the Tribeca Film Institute. While a bad faith depiction of Nigeria, as seen in reviews which reveal a picture of a country crawling with more scammers than honest folk, it’s one of the few attempts to detail what exactly goes on with this scam that isn’t a garish caricature of the country—like on animated TV Show Family Guy and sitcoms Malcolm In The Middle and How I Met Your Mother. As an idea coming from a foreign agency, it had to be as Nigerian as possible, yet fit for a global audience; acknowledging that the scams do in fact exist—with losses as much as $700,000 annually as of 2019—while also affirming the difference from real princes.
For the 2026 Cannes Lion Health and Wellness Shortlist judge, Ghanaian-American Dr. Adjoah B. Asamoah, who leads the global CROWN Act campaign, the ad’s authenticity stood out. “While I cannot disclose how I voted, I can share [that] the idea of African royalty instantly resonated with me. The focus on authenticity was noteworthy and the play to combat a common stereotype was clever,” she told Culture Custodian. Dr. Adjoah believes that more African ad agencies need to tell our own stories rooted in our own worldview and lived experiences. She opined, “We are culture creators and by default must be culture keepers. Part of plotting our path forward should include maintaining our own ‘agency’ as a people and working collaboratively to require brands to retain agencies with the expertise on the continent.”
In the aftermath of The Nigerian Prince’s 5-Lions win, conversations have arisen about Nigeria’s place in the global scene, especially as just 1 of the 9 Lions won so far by Nigeria-focused ads has been attributed to the country—X3M’s Soot Life Expectancy ad. It’s a situation oddly similar to what’s seen in film most recently with My Father’s Shadow, which was shot in Nigeria and involved Nigerian creatives every step of the way, yet propelled as the UK’s entry at the Oscars on its way to a BAFTA’s win. X3M’s Creative Director, Anthony Eigbe, who served as a Cannes Outdoor Lions shortlisting judge this year, commented on the gap between acknowledgment and institutional ownership in a video that appeared to resonate with industry professionals. Commentators suggested that the dearth of similar work was down to Nigerian companies’ unwillingness to accept unorthodox ideas.
In conversation with Culture Custodian, Eigbe identified the rote approach to recent campaigns in recent times: “Step 1: Get a slogan/campaign line built off of a pop culture slang. Step 2: Hire a mega influencer to to be the brand ambassador. Step 3: Create generic visuals of people smiling whilst holding the product with said slogan written above. Step 4: Hire more influencers en masse to push the slogan through content” before adding that “We don’t do big ideas or big acts. We just follow the template.” Still, he is optimistic that this is a temporary phase for the industry.
Oladayo believes that the industry needs more support, and more brave clients willing to stand behind ambitious local ideas, because “Nigerian stories can travel globally without being stripped of what makes them Nigerian.”
Concerning the 1 to 9 Lions split, he expounded, “Part of the divide comes from how international advertising awards are credited. A campaign can be shot in Nigeria, feature Nigerian talent, and depend heavily on Nigerian cultural interpretation, yet still be attributed to the international agency or office where the idea originated and was entered. However, I also think there is a larger structural issue. Nigerian creatives are frequently brought in to execute ideas developed elsewhere, rather than being trusted and adequately supported to originate those ideas from the beginning. That is not because we lack talent. It is often a question of access, ownership, budgets, and the willingness of clients to take creative risks.”
The agencies have bold ideas stuck between layers of bureaucracy. As such, trusted formulas are favoured at the expense of innovation, a situation requiring change at both ends of the stick. “Nigerian teams need to be trusted to lead strategy and creative development, not only production. At the same time, if we want more work attributed directly to Nigeria, we must move from being seen primarily as an execution destination to becoming recognised as an originating creative force,” he asserts.
Eigbe is in agreement, but includes specific problems with craft, agencies lacking agency, access to accurate data, and regulation. “Cannes is an open process. Cannes is now more diversified and democratic than ever. There are now countries that have never won at the festival but have representatives as judges/jurors. So we can’t really re-use the old trope of, ‘the world doesn’t understand our African stories.’ We are now part of the people judging the stories.”
Fortunately, as with—perhaps even more than—Nollywood, the Nigerian and African advertising sector has taken steps to celebrate its own and protect agencies’ interests. The year before X3M broke the Cannes Lions streak, they won 16 awards at the 2022 Pitchers Creativity Awards, one of the continent’s largest and most consistent award ceremonies with an expansive branding, advertisement, and marketing recognition bracket. Within Nigeria alone, there are the Nigeria Brand Awards, Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival (LAIF) Awards, Advertisers Association of Nigeria’s (ADVAN), African Awards for Marketing Excellence, and Brandcom Awards; award shows with appreciable turnouts, celebrated by winners with as much vigour as continental and international award ceremonies.
In 2022, global media agency, Zenith, showed that the Nigerian ad industry was losing about ₦120 billion annually to ‘the production of advertising and marketing communication materials outside the country,’ as This Day reported. This was despite growth in the global advertising market. The Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) wasn’t passive in its response, instituting a benchmark of 75% cumulative local content for Nigeria-focused ads. From models and voice-over artists to production and post-production, ARCON demanded that Nigerian representation be at 75% effective from 1 January, 2023. The Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria’s (AAAN) 53rd Annual Conference, which was held from 23-24 June, 2026, was themed “AdVolution: The End of Advertising as We Know It and How to Win What Comes Next” in recognition of the challenges facing the industry, particularly the incursion of Artificial Intelligence (AI). ARCON currently charges a ₦1.5 million vetting fee for AI-generated ads as opposed to ₦100,000 for traditional ads. As this BusinessDay report shows, even that isn’t enough to curb the industry’s hemorrhaging revenue, a challenge not exclusive to Nigeria. But it is still essential as branding and advertising approach new grounds.
In an almost extra-fantastical, ironic exposition into the current battle between creativity and abysmal AI slop, this writer was forced to endure a distinctively AI ad for a Nigerian seasoning brand interrupting a clip of the famous ‘90s Royco seasoning cube commercial, while exploring videos of glory-years Nigerian ads on YouTube.
Regardless, Oladayo insists that AI is not ‘necessarily the enemy’ but instead ‘lazy thinking’ is. “I use it intentionally in certain parts of my process, and I believe it can be a powerful tool when it strengthens an idea. The problem begins when people treat it as a substitute for the idea itself when the entire creative process becomes typing, ‘Give me an advert,’ into a platform and accepting whatever comes back.”
He believes AI can be applied to research, experimentation, and visualisation, supporting the production, and post-production process. However, strong creative work should still begin with a real human problem or cultural truth. “AI cannot replace lived cultural understanding. It does not automatically give you taste, perspective or emotional intelligence. If the original thinking is weak, AI will simply help you produce weak work more quickly,” he shares.
If there’s one thing Oladayo sees with The Nigerian Prince’s Cannes Lion victories, it’s “Possibilities. Possibilities. Possibilities.” “The Cannes Lions recognition has expanded my understanding of what is possible for Nigerian and African creatives. This campaign took one of the most damaging stereotypes associated with Nigerians, the idea of the ‘Nigerian Prince’ scam and transformed it into a story about authenticity, trust and protecting consumers. That tells me there is so much creative potential in the things we sometimes overlook or even feel uncomfortable discussing,” he emphasises as our conversation draws to a close. One Bronze Lion in 2023, three Silver Lions in 2025, and one Gold and four Bronze Lions in 2026. Perhaps, a Grand Prix, the festival’s highest possible honours, next. He believes this trajectory is but a beginning. And he wants others to believe so too.
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