The 1970s marked a change in the advertising industry where adverts shifted from just paper prints to multimedia modes. In 1970, two successful ad companies: Rosabel Advertising and Insight Communication changed the game of adverts by introducing new creative approaches to the promotion of goods and services. By the end of that decade, different companies came in dozens bringing their A-games to the advertorial industry.
In the early 90s, visual adverts became the order of the day, people look forward to adverts that resonate with their realities.
Some of these adverts contain songs that make the foot move without consent, sometimes, you find your head defying all cautions from you because the songs were beautiful, the perfect song for the perfect adverts.
However, we never knew if these adverts were perfect, peradventure, if we had, we could understand the decline in quality of advertorial videos of recent.
While different companies and business ventures keep making attempts at raising the standard of advertorials, Airtel came to raise the bar. SERA awards saw them deserving of the Best Use Of Storytelling Award and we cannot say anything against this winning because it is well-deserved.
The most important thing when it comes to adverts is that it must tell a good story, a story that people can relate with and understand even when voicing is removed. Did Airtel fulfill this condition, did they tell a good story, are their stories worth an award or is it another case of award manipulation?
A good advert must be cohesive, have a flow, and tell a good story such that, the plot will still have cohesion and coherence.
As a sample, two of airtel adverts with the theme of trust and apt service upgrades are The in-laws series and Golden trust series.

The In-Law Series Youtube
From the long prayer calls from his mother that lasts through the whole day, when the mother lived with him and had to adapt to a new way of life, the in-laws moving in with him to when there were different clash of interest clash, expressly indicate the progressiveness of the story in such a way that the interest of the audience is sustained.
When a story is being told, people process the plots differently. Hence, at some point, there was a social media outrage that the writers of the in-law series were tending towards tribal shaming – the Yoruba mother is seen as an illiterate and the Igbo counterpart is seen as learned, a motif that might lead to tribal clash if not addressed.
However, instead of taking down the whole series, the story was adjusted to accommodate a new development where both parties (mothers) were portrayed as being stuck in the past without altering the story being told. This is a level of craftsmanship that many story writers may not be able to manage. A listening ear and a pure exhibition of craft mastering.

Golden Trust Series Youtube
These two stories are interconnected and portray in a very subtle manner, the different experiences Nigerians face when it comes to network providers. The Golden trust is a subtle reminder by the writers to Airtel’s audience that the brand can be trusted to bring different upgrades at cheap prices.
However, Airtel has successfully embedded their adverts in the subconscious of their audience via their comments on social media vis-a-vis the reactions of people to adverts for other network providers.
In the same vein, a good advert must state a problem and provide a solution. Why is your company or business venture in business? what problems are you trying to solve and how have you solved this? If your advert is not addressing any problem, then it becomes noise which will fade like vapour in the minds of people.
A common problem when it comes to service providers in Nigeria is bad and extremely expensive network services. And there are many people who have raged against poor services they said Airtel rendered to them.
However, with the different visual representations in Airtel videos, they have smoothly summarised the problems faced by people and in the same vein, given us a solution which is the portrayal of the different services they provide to tackle these issues.
To sum it up, the audience is thus left to determine is the advert suits their needs or not, but when something is always in your face, someday, you tend to give a trial. The Airtel adverts are good examples of what a good advert should be and how stories should be told and SERA award? it is a winning well deserved.