Twitter co-creator, Obama Campaign Director, Babatunde Fashola and others for Youth Marketing Conference in Lagos.

One of the co-creators of popular social networking site, Twitter, Dom
Sagolla and Sam Graham - Felson, a Blog Director with Obama’s Online
Campaign will lead a line up of speakers at the first edition of Youth
Marketer Converge Conference (YMC 1.0) scheduled to take place in Eko
Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos between March 17 and 18, 2011.
The Youth Marketer Converge Conference, with the theme: ‘The Youth:
Understand them to reach them’ will be the largest gathering of
marketing professionals focused on the youth demography in Africa. It
will also feature other professionals from the African continent and
Europe, UK and the USA for peer reviews and best practices.
F.B. initiatives, a fast – rising marketing and advertising firm are
the organizers of this epoch-making event. Led by the dynamic Funke
Babatola, “F.B. Initiatives has identified the huge gap between youth
brands and their targets and therefore provides this platform to
engage professionals, stakeholders from all over Africa to expose
these professionals to statistics and data that will escalate
purchasing power of young people, foster better-informed policy
decisions, produce more creative and well-thought-out brand campaigns
and result in higher revenue for youth brands – as impressive as the
market size and potential”.
The series of events scheduled to take place include: a pre-conference
dinner, conference and youth exposition for Brand Managers, Marketing
Managers, Marketing Directors, CEOs, Creative and Advertising Media
Agencies, Brand Custodians, Social Entrepreneurs, Youth Leaders/Trend
Setters, other Marketing Professionals, Researchers and other
professionals in the Brand and Marketing industry around the
continent.
The impressive speakers list includes: His Excellency, Babatunde Raji
Fashola, Executive Governor of Lagos State, Dom Sagolla, co-creator
Twitter and Author, ‘140 Characters: a style guide for the short
form’, Sam Graham-Felsen, Blog Director, Obama's Online Campaign, Kali
Ilunga - CEO Spoken Ink, South Africa, Toyosi Akerele, CEO, RISE
Group, Mosun Layode, Executive Director, LEAP Africa, Adebola Williams
and Chude Jideonwo of The Future Project, Osayi Alile-Oruene,
Executive Director, Fate Foundation, Felicia Lekan-Salami Country
Manager, AC Neilsen Ghana, Tunji Adeyinka, MD, Connect Marketing,
Dimeji Matesun, Saphire Virtual (representatives of Research in
Motion, manufacturers of Blackberry) amongst many others.
So far, there has never been any platform to engage the youth market
and for professionals to converge to discuss this increasingly
powerful demography. YMC seeks to be the bridge that links
professionals, asks the hard questions, proffers solutions to
challenges and opens up the Youth Market in different regions of the
continent to more brand activities and above all, provide young people
with more interesting choices.

Funke Babatola re-iterates, “we cannot continue to have campaigns that
are totally disconnected from the target. We need to pay more
professional and creative attention to the youth market. YMC seeks to
do this and much more”. As a result, the growing demand for the youth
population from business to politics and the meteoric rise of
youth-led initiatives, products and services has compelled the
organisers to put together the conference.
Beyond the conference, YMC will continue to exist through the year as
an information and resource portal with updates on the Youth Marketing
scene across the continent and a reference source for data on Youth
Marketing and Research. The outcome of this initiative is a more
professional, competitive and impactful youth market with many luring
brands that are focused on engaging young people.