Communiqué 97: Redrick wants to be the creative industry’s chief publicist
With more than $200 million in earned media value for past clients, Redrick PR is positioning itself as the communications backbone of Africa’s creative industry events.
Why this matters
Behind every major cultural platform is an invisible layer of communications infrastructure shaping how the world sees African creativity. the creative Industries don’t scale on talent alone; they scale on the systems that give that talent visibility, credibility, and organisation.
Curated experiences and well-run events aren’t just marketing tactics. They are the structural backbone that attracts investment, captures attention and gives the creative economy the legitimacy it needs to grow.
1. Where the art season really begins
Every year, ART X Lagos, West Africa’s premier art fair, begins the same way: with a press conference. It’s where the vision for each edition is unveiled, and where the fair’s organisers outline what audiences, collectors, artists, and partners should expect.
For the 10th edition, the format remained the same, but the atmosphere carried added significance. ART X had reached its 10th anniversary, so when founder Tokini Peterside-Schwebig took the microphone, she looked back on a decade of ambition, experimentation, and cultural advocacy. Then, with the same measured confidence that has shaped the fair’s trajectory, she revealed what this year holds.
The event was polished, intentional, and seamless. Every element, from messaging to media coordination and the pacing of the announcement, felt precise. That precision was the output of a communications engine that is becoming one of the most influential behind-the-scenes forces in Nigeria’s creative economy: Redrick PR.
ART X Lagos is only one stop in an event marathon that has come to define Lagos’ cultural and creative economy season. And this year, Redrick has helmed communications for several key events on the calendar, including Design Week Lagos, Lagos Fashion Week, and Entertainment Week Lagos.
While ART X Lagos spent the last decade building a cultural platform that amplifies African art, Redrick has spent just as long shaping how these conversations reach audiences locally and internationally. First for luxury brands like L’Oréal and Moët Hennessy, and now it’s applying that same muscle to creative economy events.
2. From blogger to brand architect
Before Redrick existed, its founder, Ijeoma Balogun, was a teenager with an early interest in communication. She won speech-writing competitions, wrote for her school press club, and unknowingly ran her first PR campaign when she crafted messaging and rallied support to become head girl in secondary school.
After secondary school, Balogun moved to Paris to study global communications, with a minor in business administration. But her real education began earlier, during a gap year in Lagos. When she couldn’t secure an internship at True Love—the glossy magazine widely seen as Nigeria’s answer to Vogue—she created her own platform: a fashion blog called Naija Fashion Freak. The timing was perfect. Blogging was beginning to shape media globally, and Balogun was among the early adopters.
Her experience running her personal blog led to a role at BellaNaija, then still a fledgling blog. Balogun became the publication’s first style editor. Running the vertical exposed her to another emerging layer of Nigeria’s creative industries: fashion PR. Designers began emailing her, pitching content and requesting placement. It was the first time she saw an opportunity to help brands reach their target audience.
When Balogun returned to Lagos after university, she already had four years’ experience at BellaNaija and was ready for a change. She initially planned to work at a PR agency. But unable to secure a role at her preferred firm during her compulsory national service, she began freelancing.
Her first client came through a referral from BellaNaija founder Uche Pedro, who knew she wanted to work in PR. It was a lifestyle television show on DStv, produced by media entrepreneur Bola Balogun. Shortly after, she secured her second client: former Miss World and fashion entrepreneur Agbani Darego.
From the beginning, Redrick was positioned in the cultural and creative economy. Balogun’s early work in fashion media shaped the agency’s first specialisation: fashion, beauty, and entertainment. The contacts she built during her BellaNaija and blogging years became her first marketing channel. And one of those relationships led to the agency’s breakout account.
Lagos Fashion Week, already a fast-growing cultural platform, needed a more structured communications strategy. The founder, Omoyemi Akerele, had established a relationship with Balogun since her BellaNaija days. That relationship, alongside a recommendation from Bola Balogun, helped Redrick land Lagos Fashion Week as a client. They’ve been together for 10 years now.
3. The experiential playbook
Over the last decade, global luxury brands—from Ralph Lauren and Tom Ford—have expanded into Africa. They have initially focused on distribution, retail partnerships, and the slow build-out of formal local operations. But the real work of establishing presence has happened through cultural positioning, and in Nigeria, that positioning has depended heavily on events.
“When you’re operating in the consumer lifestyle segment in Nigeria, you do events to engage with your target audience, and engage with them in a way that is intimate,” Balogun told Communiqué. In a market where advertising infrastructure remains fragmented, and consumer trust is built socially, events have become the most effective top-of-funnel strategy. The consumer is persuaded not only through messaging but through proximity to brands, community, and cultural gatekeepers.
“As a people, we like to experience brands. You can’t be a brand speaking directly to consumers and not have an experiential element to your engagement strategies. It’s not possible—not in this environment,” she said.
These events are built for influence, not scale. The goal is not thousands of guests, but the right hundred. Invitations are curated with surgical precision. As Balogun puts it: “Ahead of the event, you say, I need these specific 120 people. At the end of the day, a good ratio we judge ourselves by is about 60%. To get that range, you need to invite at least double. And we typically reach 60–80% of our target audience.”
The agency’s early work with Lagos Fashion Week became the training ground for this model. As international beauty and fashion brands entered Nigeria, Redrick was already fluent in the cultural mechanics they needed to succeed. The agency became a bridge: translating global expectations into local execution.
Soon, the model expanded beyond luxury fashion. When Amazon Prime Video launched in Nigeria, it turned to Redrick. Redrick also helped NBA Africa launch in Nigeria, tapping into the creative economy through partnerships with organisations like ART X to grow basketball culture in the country.
4. A game of scale
More than a decade after its founding, Redrick has helped shape how global companies introduce themselves to one of Africa’s most culturally influential markets, landing placements in international publications like Vogue, Airmail, The Business of Fashion, and CNN, and generating more than $200 million in earned media value for its clients. Now, it’s taking that experience and applying it specifically to creative economy events.
In 2021, the agency added Entertainment Week Lagos to its client roster. This year, it added Design Week Lagos and ART X Lagos. The timing isn’t accidental. The creative economy, once treated as a side activity, is now recognised as a meaningful contributor to national economic growth.
“When we started with Lagos Fashion Week, people did not take us seriously,” Balogun recalls. “It was not considered work—people thought we were just having fun wearing clothes. Now there’s a shift. The creative industry has such a low barrier to entry, and it gives a large number of people employment and the opportunity to create something for themselves. And creative industry events are the infrastructure on which the industry has been built.”
Infrastructure may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of fashion shows, art fairs, or cultural festivals. But in practice, they perform much of the same function: they organise activity, concentrate attention, and signal value. Without platforms where talent can be discovered, funded, or benchmarked, creativity remains scattered, informal, and economically insignificant.
Events create visibility, enabling the right audiences—collectors, investors, corporate partners, global media—to find the right creators. They build ecosystems by bringing fragmented industry nodes together in one room: galleries, investors, sponsors, policymakers, and emerging talent. They also help attract investment. The presence of international brands at Lagos Fashion Week or global collectors at ART X signals that the market exists and is worth taking seriously. Standards rise, expectations evolve, and the work becomes more institutional.
Beyond economics, these events have helped reinforce Lagos’s reputation as a cultural capital on the continent. Redrick’s role in that shift is strategic. It ensures the right people hear the right message at the right time. And in doing so, it reinforces the belief not just that the creative economy matters, but that it can scale.
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