Steve Babaeko, Founder and CEO of Nigeria’s first pan-African creative advertising agency, X3M Ideas, has been named a Visiting Fellow of Henley Business School, University of Reading in the United Kingdom.
The fellowship which will run for two years until 2024 will see Steve Babaeko commence research into business cases that will further the development and optimisation of the creative industry in Nigeria and across Africa.
His research at Henley Business School comes on the heels of the announcement of X3M Ideas’ involvement in the United Nations’ Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women. Steve and the team at X3M Ideas recently joined the Nigeria chapter of the Unstereotype Alliance to ensure that Nigerian creatives reject all harmful stereotypes, including conventional gender clichés.
“We are delighted to welcome Steve Babaeko as Visiting Fellow at Henley Business School. Steve’s knowledge and experience working as and with entrepreneurs and innovators in Africa provides an excellent complement to Henley’s belief in the power of creativity to develop industry and communities. We are all looking forward to a fruitful and ongoing relationship with Steve and fellow professionals in Nigeria,” said John Board, Dean, Henley Business School.
A world-renowned expert on creative advertising and marketing communications, Steve is also the President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), a position he was elected into in 2020. Before his inevitable transition to that position, he was the Chairman of the board of Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival (LAIF) and member of the board of International Advertising Association (I.A.A), Nigeria. Outside of advertising, he also served as the Chairman, Public Relations Committee of the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce.
For more than 23 years, Steve has helped create some of the most iconic marketing campaigns in Africa and is currently the only Nigerian named in Adweek’s elite list of 13 Global Creative leaders in 2019. He has also served on the Grand Jury of the New York Advertising Festival for over three years and was a keynote speaker at the 2018 International Advertising Association conference.
As a fellow, Steve believes he has a chance to “begin to set the standard for the Nigerian creative industry and show everyone what is possible. I am grateful for this opportunity as I believe that we practitioners have to begin to explore the complex questions around the present state of our industry and its future not just in Nigeria but across Africa. I look forward to engaging all the other faculty members and students and learning from the wealth of knowledge that is available and is produced at the Henley Business School.”
Henley Business School, a truly international business school with more than 87,000 alumni in over 165 countries, conducts advanced research spanning a broad range of academic areas and fields from finance, entrepreneurship, leadership and real estate, as well as housing the highly regarded Henley Centre for Coaching. Henley Business School has campuses and operations across the world, with courses delivered in the UK, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Malta and beyond.
