A few weeks ago, Business Day published an article about how Nigerian companies had invested N500m into the entertainment industry, opening up a N500 million market for music artistes, actors and sportsmen – well, we can tell you that figure is quite modest. According to investigations by Nigerian Entertainment Today, as of June 2013, the revenue from endorsements is close to a billion.

Associating a popular face with brand appears set to become the easiest way to sell a product and build brand affinity.
The telecommunications companies seem to be leading the way of brands offering endorsement deals grabbing a handful of celebrities and offering them mouth-watering, lucrative deals (we’re talking double figures in the millions here) as brand ambassadors.

In 2010 Psquare broke bank when Nigerian telco Globacom scooped them up as brand ambassadors with an endorsement deal reportedly worth N240m. Psquare who charge an average of N15m as performance fee for a show would have to perform 16 times to get that much.