Babaeko Addresses Global Audience on Innovation, Winning Strategies

Raheem Akingbolu

The Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer of X3M Idea, Steve Babaeko, has urged individuals and businesses to be innovative, adapt, and evolve amid challenges as it is part of the strategies to winning in today’s fast-changing world.

Babaeko disclosed this while speaking on the topic “How to Look Challenges in The Eyes and Stare Them Down to Win.” at the 2024 Nedbank IMC Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He explained that challenges are part of life and how individuals and businesses respond to them makes a difference. He stated that new technologies and innovations like Artificial intelligence (AI) and others in the market come with opportunities and challenges but how a business leverages it to boost its operation and productivity matters.

He added that forward-thinking individuals and organisations need to keep innovating, be resilient, add more value, and keep making an impact in society to continue to remain relevant.

“The key word for our existence on this planet is going to be change. So, AI is the new buzzword now. Like I always tell my colleagues, the new media of today is going to be the old media of the next six months. That’s why you see even for the phone manufacturers; their iOS gets updated almost now and then, so we get to just play catch up. But the thing that we must know is that no matter what media, no matter what technology comes up today, tomorrow, or the day after, one thing is going to supersede everything is the innate ability of mankind to adapt and to evolve and survive,” he said.

He explained further that winning in life takes courage and determination, stating that every human is a winner right from birth as he or she won the race to be born having competed with 20 million spermatozoa. He called for a positive mindset and developing the right strategies to win in life and business.

“As human beings, you are always going to feel besieged from either side to say there are challenges everywhere you turn. But then, it takes a lot of courage to be able to look inside you and say, I was born to win because we’ve always been in a race, always. And to get here, I mean, through 20 million- within those spermatozoa that gave birth to you, you won that race, that’s the first race to be here. So, you’re already a winner. So, it’s just to know that for every hurdle and every bump in the road you meet, you’re just going to stand tall and you’re going to win,” he pointed out.

He therefore urged people to have self-belief and self-affirmation to be able to handle every challenge as it comes and use them to move forward.

“Life is all about challenges, right? That is why you have to have a lot of self-belief, and self-affirmation. Always continuously remind yourself, even to the extreme of looking yourself in the mirror when you wake up and reaffirm, speak all of those words of affirmation to yourself. Every day it’s a battle, every day is a challenge, but you’re going to rise, you’re going to win, especially in the much more difficult world that we live in today.”

The annual Nedbank IMC Conference is Africa’s foremost integrated marketing conference. It is also one of the largest gatherings of CMOs, senior marketers, and agency leaders worldwide. The 2024 theme is ‘Challenge Yourself. Keep Learning. Keep Leading’ and also had the attendance of stakeholders in the business of communication.

Steve Babaeko who joined other international speakers to make a presentation at the event is one of Nigeria’s renowned creative professionals and a revered entrepreneur with an unyielding resilience and belief that with challenges come opportunities and innovation. His ‘never say die’ attitude has helped him overcome many difficulties and build a globally recognised, creative empire that spans multiple genres and countries.

Babaeko’s accolades and recognition from both Africa and the world are numerous from being Nigeria and West Africa’s first-ever Cannes Lions winner to appearing in Adweek’s Top 100 Creatives in the World, as well as having X3M Ideas emerging as the African Agency of the Year at the African Cristal Awards in Morocco in 2023.