Popular Political Economist and Professor of Entrepreneurship, Prof Pat Utomi will be the Keynote Speaker at the 2021 Brandcomfest scheduled for Thursday, 18th November at the D’Podium Event Center, Ikeja, Lagos.

Utomi is billed to speak on “Dissecting the Prism of brand building in a volatile economy”, which is also the main theme of this year’s event.

The erudite Professor is a fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants of Nigeria and founding Senior Faculty of the Lagos Business School-Pan Atlantic University, and Chairman and Chief Executive of the Integrated Produce City (IPC). He is also the Executive Vice Chairman of SmartCity Lagos, a joint holding with Dubai Holdings by SmartCity Dubai.

He has served on the Africa Board of a leading global professional service firm, Deloitte, and was Director of The Centre for Applied Economics at the Lagos Business School.

Utomi has served in senior positions in government, as an Adviser to the President of Nigeria; the Private Sector, as Chief Operating Officer for Volkswagen of Nigeria, and in academia. He is the author of many business and public policy books including the award-winning “Managing Uncertainty: Competition and Strategy in Emerging Economies, 1998 and the 2006 book “Why Nations are Poor”, “The Art of Leading”, 2016, as well as “WHY NOT”, 2019.

He is the Chairman of PAFTRAC the Pan African Private Sector Trade and Investment Committee sponsored by AU and Afrexim Bank. He is also the Founder and CEO of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL). He was a candidate for President of Nigeria in 2007 and 2011.

Other key speakers at the event include Dr Olalekan Fadolapo, Registrar/ CEO Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), Emmanuel Agu, Group Marketing Director, Jotna Nig Ltd; Amaka Onyemelukwe, Director, Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability, The Coca Cola Company; Titilope Oguntuga, Head, Sustainable Development/ Corp. Brand, Lafarge Africa; Israel Opeyemi, Chief Strategist, Chain Reaction; Femi Adelusi, President MIPAN, and many others.

Some will also be speaking on various sub-themes under the following segments; Fintech, Sustainability, Insurance Marketing, SME Brand Masterclass, FMCG, Industry Standard of Practice, PR among others.

Brandcomfest is designed to be the largest gathering of stakeholders in the brand and marketing communications landscape. The annual event caters to the most contemporary and topical issues in the industry, as the foremost thought-leadership platform for stakeholders within the brands and marketing communications value chain.

According to Joshua Ajayi, convener of Brandcomfest and publisher of Brand Communicator, “Last year because of COVID we could not hold the event but this year we are back, to do bigger and better than what we did at our maiden edition in 2019 which was one of the biggest events of that year. Brandcomfest is more essential at this time which is the reason for the choice of our theme.

“The essence of Brandcomfest remains the same post-COVID and it is to serve as our way of linking the future, in line with the vision which we have religiously kept faith with since we hit the newsstands over a decade ago”.

Brand Communicator is Nigeria’s most consistent brand and marketing communications magazine. It is also the organiser of the Women in Marketing and Communications Conference/Awards (WIMCA), the largest gathering of female marketing and communications professionals in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. It is also a partner to the two biggest creative advertising shows on the continent, Loeries Africa Middle East and African Cristal Festival.