The electioneering season is here again, and predictably, posters and billboards are multiplying across Lagos and Nigeria.
But one thing is immediately striking: a single political brand has overwhelmingly colonised the outdoor space. Everywhere you turn, the same faces, colours and slogans compete for your attention — while the competition is nearly invisible.
From a marketing standpoint, that is both a warning and an opening.
Visibility matters, undeniably. The brand that dominates the streets builds Share of Voice, and Share of Voice compounds into Share of Mind. You cannot vote for — or buy into — a brand that never enters your consciousness in the first place.
But here is the sharper question: what does the underdog do when it simply cannot outspend the market leader?
The answer was never “buy more billboards.” It is: become impossible to ignore in a different arena.
When a competitor owns the physical space, you own the conversation. When they dominate billboards, you dominate digital. When they win through repetition, you win through relevance. When they out-budget you, you out-think them. When they are everywhere, you become unforgettable somewhere else entirely.
This is precisely where guerrilla marketing, grassroots mobilisation, social media storytelling, community engagement, influencer networks, and sharp creative execution stop being buzzwords and start becoming survival strategy.
A smaller brand rarely beats a larger one by shouting louder. It wins by saying the one thing people can’t scroll past.
Lagos’s political opposition may never match an entrenched machine billboard-for-billboard. But creativity has always been the challenger’s refuge — and, wielded well, the challenger’s sharpest weapon.
Because in marketing, as in politics, budget buys attention. Ideas capture imagination.
And elections — like markets — are never won by whoever posts the most. They’re won by whoever occupies the most real estate in the one place billboards can’t reach: the mind of the voter.
*Ken Ihedioha is a media and marketing veteran. He writes from Lagos.
