On a sunny afternoon, I saw some men in shorts unfurling a banner with a clear message. There was a guy at a female colleague’s house, pleading with her to promote his film. Elsewhere, another man appeared in a staged clip at a female colleague’s house, pretending to steal a VIP invitation package. Next, I saw three women: one was showing her frustration about those sabotaging her creative efforts, another was trying to clear the air and defend her name against a damaging rumour. The third was an elderly woman in tears. A young guy was seen patting her on the back, urging her not to be dispirited and to hope for the best in her craft.
At about the same time, two thespians, a man and a woman, appeared on television as if in magisterial roles, offering contrarian views that did not align with others.
The camera did not stop. It rolled from Lagos to London to Canada for one purpose: the premieres of films.
The scenes above are short montages of some tactics employed by Nigerian filmmakers to ensure cinema halls are jam-packed when their films are shown.
Such spectacles are relics that could be traced back to the travelling theatre era, when the doyens of the industry moved from city to city and country to country with their wives and others in provocative dress on top of buses, promoting their films. This desire to break even, as it was in the beginning, is now more pertinent among dramatic practitioners of this era, as the cost of putting a film together is not for the faint of heart. Then, while a practitioner determined who got what, the cinema’s economic sharing formula does that now. It is this sharing formula and the motive to break even that necessitated the scenes displayed by actors at the beginning of this piece.
From the scenes, we can see the emergence of two different blocs: the performative, those dancing and doing skits; and the work-centred faction, those that downplay such acts. As it is, I cannot issue a mea culpa on either of them. Why? The path they’ve taken to promote their film is deeply rooted in known filmmaking theory.
Those men in boxer shorts unfurling a banner with a message and the skit-making party are simply tending towards Star System Theory, which has its roots in Hollywood and thrives on the power of the star to be the focal point of audience attraction to the cinema. The only variance being that while there are frameworks like image makers and others put in place to build the star organically, the performative believers in Nigeria see themselves as the star. For some time, we have seen thespians like Funke Akindele and some others promoting their films through dance, skits, and meet-and-greet sessions in various cinemas. Such acts align with the Star System line of thought.
For those on the other side of the divide, those with contrarian views about dance performance, such a view is rooted in Auteur Theory, a theory that sprouted from France in the late 1940s. It places the complete work of the director at the acme of attraction of the audience to the cinema. The likes of Kunle Afolayan think that the quality of their work, tight storylines, and reputation built over time are what should drive their work. This thinking aligns with Auteur Theory.
Both sides of the divide in Nigeria have beautiful numbers: from Funke Akindele’s Behind the Scenes, which crossed N2.7 billion, the all-time highest-grossing Nollywood film, to Toyin Abraham’s Oversabi Aunty, which grossed N1.08 billion to be the fourth-highest-grossing Nollywood film of all time. The numbers are looking good. Even as of mid-2026, another film, Call of My Life, had crossed N498 million at the West African box office. But does this figure represent the zenith of such creative works? Should the practitioner in the industry continue with the fairytale performance above or seek optimum performance?
Optimum performance can only be found when those in the film industry, who already have a way of winning in business, find a way of winning on the marketing side. The presently elusive optimum performance is tied to the apron of strategy. “Strategy exists because instruction fails” is an enduring homily, correctly or wrongly linked to Joe Burns. As it stands, the semblance of strategy in the film ecosystem is embryonic; what exists is a mishmash of promotion that cannot coalesce into something tangible.
In one of his pieces, Mark Ritson lamented that marketing was being relegated to the background in organisations, and when it was given pride of place, it was “devolving into a base tactical pursuit devoid of strategic thinking”. The Nigerian film industry reflects a similar malaise, where many thespians and producers confuse tactics with strategy—they are different, with one being a precursor to the other.
We can liken what we have now to a filmmaker playing a game of darts in the dark; the chances of hitting the bull’s eye are remote. The world over, we have seen films that have strategically played the marketing game openly and hit the bull’s eye.
On this list, we have Jaws (1975) — directed by Steven Spielberg — an adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel that centred on a man-eating great white shark. A solid eight months before the film hit the theatres, there were talk shows and tours about the film, coupled with massive television marketing and the usual practice of the film show in different cinemas at the same time rather than staggered. Jaws became the first film to earn more than $100m at the box office and over $470m in global returns.
Next is Barbie. Till now, the Barbie (2023) marketing campaign remains the gold standard in film marketing. It is a synthesis of ideas and partnership of brands, coordination and efficient media mix that fuelled unprecedented virality, giving rise to the pink revolution and “Barbenheimer”, and its emergence as 2023’s highest-grossing movie globally with $1.44bn earned at the box office. The film Barbie shows the importance of the integration of three media: earned, owned, and paid media, with integration bringing about remarkable success. The naysayers may point to jaw-dropping production costs and the more than $140m used in promoting the Barbie film as unattainable in an economy like ours. Such comments, as credible as they may seem on the surface, are like words written with toes close to the sea.
Rory Sutherland once said, “Long-term success often looks like short-term ‘failure’ when you’re playing a different game, one based on trust instead of extraction.”
Perhaps, this was the guiding principle of the two guys, without the financial war chest, big studio and partnership of Barbie and Jaws to play a different game. In 1999, two unknown landlubbers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, with virtually no star, no budget, no big studio, and no advertising money, turned The Blair Witch Project, a $60,000 film, into a masterclass in film marketing. The duo, using narrative, curiosity, and entropy, created an explosion for The Blair Witch, a film with a budget of $60,000, earning a revenue of $248m globally. A figure that represents one of the highest returns in film history.
The current crop of artistes is upping the ante. They’ve not only added something new to what was bequeathed to them, but they’ve also succeeded in unfurling the banner of Nollywood. The beautiful stories from our productions have also ensured that cinema houses that disappeared in the 80s and 90s are now springing back in various parts of the country.
Now is not the time for them to rest on their oars. There are still many things to be done to get to the Barbie and Jaws benchmark.
As it is, we can only shout “Kenyatta”, not “Uhuru”, since we are still grappling with the distinction between “how” (tactics) and “what” (strategy).
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