CN: What is the story behind Swift Digital Motions?
AD: Swift Digital Motions came about through the efforts of my older brother, Dipo Dabiri and a mutual friend of his, Nnamdi Ugwu. They were intrigued by the opportunities that indoor, digital advertising provided to companies. We contacted the company that manufactured the screens in England. They have the largest network of digital screens in Europe and we asked them to consider Nigeria. They have no presence in West Africa and were aware of the risks on entering a new market, so we were able to convince them to give us the license to run their screens in Nigeria. We would start small, gradually increasing their network and in turn offer them more insights into the West African Market. And that’s how Swift Digital Motions was born as a company.
CN: What does this brand do and how does it solve people’s problems?
AD: What we do at SDMotions can be broken down into 2 simple areas: Digital Signage and Domestic Advertising Opportunities. Digital Signage is simply using technology, in this case our LCD digital display screens, to display information. We try and convince people in high traffic locations to allow us to install our screens in their locations. The technology inside our screens is actually what makes our digital signage unique. There’s a camera which uses facial detection to count views on the screen and the software analyses the faces the camera has picked up to give us feedback. We receive the gender of the faces and the age range (0-16, 16-35, 35-60, 60 and above). Our screens are also networked. They have a SIM card inside, so it’s connected to the internet and we can remotely upload, schedule and remove your adverts.
The second part of our business is now convincing small businesses, individuals and companies to come and advertise our screens, either locally or across the whole network.
This is where we help people solve some of their problems. Because we can display multiple adverts on the same screens, we are able to charge low prices. Advertising all of a sudden becomes cheaper. Local businesses and fellow SMEs are able to have a cheap, cost effective way having an advertising profile and getting knowledge about their products and services to a wider range of people. A lot of SMEs fail because their potential consumers are not aware of their services early enough and we believe our platform can help give them a local advertising platform
CN: What are your services and how easy are they to market?
AD: Marketing our digital signage services and expanding our network of locations is a bit hard, but ultimately we’ve been making progress because of the strength of our screens and the underlying technology behind it. People have started reaching out to us, inquiring about how we can install the screens in their locations. We don’t pay rent for the locations, but rather we have a revenue sharing scheme with the businesses. It’s more cost effective for us at this stage of our development.
As for the domestic advertising opportunities, marketing it is not particularly difficult if we are speaking to the decision makers at respective companies. They have started to see advertising as an investment which leads to profit in the long run. Some others see advertising as just a cost out of the business so it’s a bit of a harder job convincing those people to invest in our platform
CN: What would you term as your company’s competitive edge?
AD: The technology behind our screens is obviously important, but I think what helps us stand is that our platform is very dynamic. If you have multiple products and services to advertise, or different campaigns or adverts for the same product, it costs you the same to use our platform as we can schedule what time and what day an advert will show within a particular period.
We also try, as people, to be as dynamic and flexible as our platform. We try and give as much information and ideas to our clients, attend to their needs and address their concerns as quickly as possible. We need repeat business to survive and our relationship with all our clients, whether big or small, is the same: friendly, informative and accessible. Today’s pauper is tomorrow prince. As their business grows, so will ours.
CN: What are the challenges you face starting out?
AD: Well, from the technology aspect, we depend on Nigerian mobile networks. Mobile telephony services have improved by leaps and bounds in the last decade but improvements can be still be made. Sometimes, we cannot access the data on our screens or get detailed feedback because of network issues. Fluctuating power as well can also damage our screens.
Aside from that, the biggest challenge is lack of knowledge about the benefits of our platform. People hear about us and think it’s just a TV, or a regular screen. We also haven’t been able to establish our platform among the media buyers, who control the advertising budget for a lot of large, multinational companies. However, we’ve only been operational for about 6 months and I have no doubt we will be in their minds in the not too distant future.
CN: How do you handle competition?
AD: Well, we handle it the way anybody else would. Distinguish ourselves through hard work, honesty, excellent service. We genuinely believe in the strength of our platform and its inherent benefits. We want to be more than just an advertising company. We want to be an information resource for indoor advertising in Nigeria so we will just keep on doing what we are doing now, developing our insights and improving our knowledge base.
And we have very low prices as well. That definitely helps, even though cost is not always the most important factor in advertising or even in sales.
CN: What role does the internet play in your business?
AD: Well, it’s actually the core of our business. It’s how we operate our platform and access the information we need. The data collected from screens is processed and is available to us online. We can see the on and off times of our screens as well because all that data is sent over the internet. We definitely cannot function without it. We are also trying to build our brand and profile online with our social media accounts, which also help us get our name out there.
CN: How would you rate customers’ satisfaction level on the services you offer?
AD: Relatively high. Our feedback so far has been pretty good. Not just from the technology, but from our excellent team. Everyone puts in their best effort to make sure our clients are happy. We help them optimise their adverts for our platform and they are usually satisfied.
CN: What are the three most important traits/characteristics you think every entrepreneur needs to possess to succeed in business?
AD: Ha, only three? So many things are important. The personality and strength of the team you work with are so important the younger a company is. Tailoring this question to the Nigerian market, a lot of our business is done in a relatively informal way so being a relationship builder is such an important skill in this market. You need to be confident in yourself, your business and this confidence permeates through to prospective clients
Determination and perseverance are also important because you need to keep on going until you make the break through that you need. Today’s no is tomorrow’s maybe and tomorrow’s maybe is next week’s yes.
I think another important factor is knowledge seeking. You constantly try and find new ways of growing your business. It can be through developing your own portfolio of skills, discovering the history of your business sector, speaking to people in the industry or many other ways. There’s no one way, but it is a process that has to continue as long as the business exists. It also ties into creativity. Creativity is a direct function of how much knowledge you possess, I believe. The more you know and the more you apply yourself, the more creative you can be. The people that are called “creative” just have the largest information resource to pool from.
I think I’ve mentioned more than three, so I’ll stop now.
CN: What advice will you give a person considering starting a new business?
AD: Never give up. If you don’t put your all into whatever you are doing, you will regret it if the business fails. I’d also recommend seriously considering the best way to adapt your business or your idea to Nigeria. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but just make sure that it can withstand the impact of the pothole when it enters the Nigerian market.
It’s also important to manage your growth. Don’t stretch yourself too thin. Great things take time. Don’t let only your ambition guide you when you are trying to get your company to where you feel it should be.
Another important thing is trust. Believing in the inherent abilities of all your team members and trusting their judgement. You can’t do everything. It’s good to know how to distribute tasks effectively.
CN: What are your plans in the next few years for this company?
AD: Well, the vision is hundreds of screens deployed across Nigeria and eventually West Africa. We want to be a means for SMEs to expose their services and products to a local market. But we also want to be a fully recognised advertising platform in Nigeria and provide advertising for big, multinational companies. We want to provide them with the ability to have a cost effective, data-driven way to analyse their information to the public in a wide region, be it Lagos, or Nigeria.
Our business scales very well, so the opportunities are limitless.
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