Sola Fajobi
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Entertainment entrepreneur, Sola Fajobi, speaks with CHUX OHAI about the making of his brands
Sola Fajobi comes across easily as a man with the Midas touch. Although he studied food science and technology first at the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro and then, at the University of Ibadan, he had always nursed one ambition: to emerge as a key media player in the mould of the American Ted Turner.
In 2005, he founded the Digital Interactive Media, as a necessary step toward the realisation of this dream, with only three people and a take-off capital of N100, 000.
?Our goal was to provide a lot of exciting, entertaining, educative and engaging content for a Nigerian audience across all social strata,? Fajobi says, in an interview with our correspondent.
The immediate result was the birth of a reality TV show called Next Movie Star.
At the time, the show came as a novelty, something previously untapped for television and aimed at discovering new talents to fill the lingering vacuum in the entertainment industry.
?When we started with Next Movie Star, our immediate objective was to discover new faces for the entertainment industry in Nigeria. Second, we wanted to provide excitement for TV viewers. Finally we aimed at providing a platform for advertisers to connect with their brands.
?Initially the going was tough and very challenging. It is tough doing a reality show of that stuff on your won in Nigeria without a sponsor. But that was what we were doing. It was actually very tough for us in the beginning.
Imagine spending N88m on the show and getting N280,000 worth of adverts in return and losing N87.5m and you are just a small company. Now that was one of the biggest challenges that we faced.
?In the end we were able to successfully give birth to a beautiful TV show that Nigerians were excited about. From there we started moving on,? Fajobi says.
Some popular figures in Nollywood today, such as Tonto Dikeh, Annie Macaulay, Kingsley Ugbosu and many others were actually products of NMS.
Eight years after, Fajobi and his crew have cause to celebrate. By dint of hardwork and creative thinking, they have been able to add more than 13 different brands to DIM?s initial haul. They include Super Mom, Dormitory 8 (drama series), Groove on TV, It happened to me (drama series), Excalibur (a drama series), Oodua TV, Excite on TV, and V Channel.
What more, DIM, which is essentially a content management firm, directly employs over 100 people and an additional 1,000 people annually.
Fajobi describes the secrets of his team?s success as determination, perseverance, creative imagination and focus.
?Our guiding motto is to make hay while the sun shines. We are basically a young outfit. But we know that a time will come when we may not be able to achieve all we want to achieve. So we work very hard here. We have the energy, the drive and creative edge to make it. Personally I don?t believe in tomorrow; I believing in achieving all I want today. Anything I can do tomorrow, I prefer to do it today so that I will enjoy myself tomorrow,? he says.
In 2006, Fajobi moved from the shooting of the reality show to the production of TV drama and films. Along the line, the idea to create another entertainment platform struck him. This time, the new baby was called Excite on TV. It is a lifestyle and magazine show on TV that is run every day on Silverbird TV, Galaxy and other major television stations in the country.
Relishing this achievement, he says, ?The birth of Excite on TV was proof that we were actually dreaming big.? I told my staff to be up and doing because the ultimate goal is to own our TV station someday.? We have always liked to do things big. Today, by the grace of God, we are one of the leading content managers in Africa.?
Always eager to set the pace for others, Fajobi was driven by the urge to celebrate motherhood to create ?Super Mom?.
Noting that the concept came at a time when the industry needed something fresh, he says, ?At a point, it occurred to us that there were too many talent-based or lifestyle-based reality shows in this part of the world. We realised that if the trend continued, our content format would be tilted towards just one direction.
??We wanted to create a new format and so we decided that it should focus on celebrating a unique personality. Then we reasoned that if anyone was worth celebrating it had to be our mothers. Apart from giving birth to us, our mothers played very crucial roles in our formative years. They nurtured us, guided us and sacrificed a lot for us.?
The man who may well turn out to be the Nigerian version of Ted Turner says he has more big projects lined up.
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