What separates fleeting attention from lasting impact is not merely scale, spectacle, or formula, but intention: the thoughtfulness and care with which a marketing campaign reflects the story it seeks to tell.
By Joseph Jonathan
Cinema has always existed in tension between art and commerce. A film may be conceived as a deeply personal expression, a cultural statement, or a work of pure entertainment, but once it leaves the hands of its makers, it enters the marketplace. Like every other product, for a film to find an audience, it must first be sold, and selling means marketing. From Hollywood blockbusters to independent African films, visibility has often mattered as much as craft.
Nollywood is no exception. Nigerian filmmakers are not only storytellers; they are entrepreneurs navigating a volatile industry. They make films with urgency and regularity, but just as important as the act of making is the challenge of getting people to watch. In an environment where the sheer volume of releases collides with the limited attention span (and disposable income) of audiences, marketing becomes the difference between a box office hit and a forgotten title.
Therefore, it is important to understand how Nollywood sells itself: the big campaigns that splash across billboards, the grassroots tours that bring films to everyday spaces, the reliance on actors as influencers, and the controversies that spark conversations. Each approach reveals not just how the industry courts audiences, but also how it is learning, experimenting, and sometimes stumbling in the delicate dance between art and business.
It would be impossible to discuss marketing in Nollywood without reference to Funke Akindele, whom many regard as the industry’s most consistent marketing force. Over the past decade, Akindele has built a reputation not only as a filmmaker and actor, but also as a strategist who understands how to turn movies into cultural events. Her marketing playbook is now widely imitated: viral skits featuring beloved side characters, TikTok dance challenges, branded merchandise, nationwide meet-and-greets, and even giveaways that keep fans emotionally and financially invested in her projects.
The results speak for themselves. Akindele’s Omo Ghetto: The Saga (2020) earned ₦636 million, becoming the highest-grossing Nollywood film at the time. In 2022, she outdid herself with Battle on Buka Street, which crossed the ₦668 million mark to claim the record. By 2023, A Tribe Called Judah shattered every existing ceiling by grossing ₦1.4 billion, making it not only the highest-grossing Nollywood film at the time but also the first to cross the billion-naira milestone. She would go on to shatter that record in 2024 when Everybody Loves Jenifa earned ₦1.8 billion at the box office. These numbers are not mere accidents of star power; they are the direct outcome of well-orchestrated campaigns that blur the line between entertainment and marketing.
What sets Akindele apart is her ability to fuse her persona with her films in ways that keep her audience invested beyond the cinema. The skits and TikTok clips are often less about selling tickets in the immediate sense and more about creating an atmosphere of collective participation; the feeling that seeing a Funke Akindele film is not just consumption, but a social event. In this way, she has set the template for Nollywood’s modern blockbuster era, where visibility, virality, and community are as crucial as story and star power.
But the very success of Akindele’s methods has also created a kind of formula that now dominates Nollywood marketing. What was once fresh and innovative—skits, dance challenges, giveaways, and influencer tie-ins—has become repetitive to the point where audiences roll their eyes at yet another TikTok dance tied to a film release.
The ubiquity of these tactics has fostered complaints that Nollywood marketing is increasingly monotonous, with little experimentation beyond Akindele’s now-standard template.
This monotony has also placed a new burden on actors, who are often expected to double as marketers for the films they star in. It is no longer enough to deliver a strong performance on screen; actors are now quietly evaluated on the size of their social media following and their willingness to create online content that promotes the film.
In a podcast conversation, actress, Jemima Osunde, raised concerns about this shift, suggesting that it places an unfair burden on performers who simply want to focus on their craft. Fellow guest, Jammal Ibrahim, echoed similar sentiments, noting that not every actor is suited for such marketing theatrics, and that pushing everyone into the same mold risks stifling individuality rather than promoting the film.
This trend raises uncomfortable questions about labour, equity, and artistry. When an actor is cast more for their social reach than their craft, what does it say about Nollywood’s priorities? And what does it mean for films whose stories demand new faces, not influencers?
As if in answer to the question, the Akay Mason–directed, Nora Awolowo and Abdul Tijani-Ahmed–produced Red Circle (2025) broke that mold by opting for intentionality, intimacy, and a deep sense of branding in its marketing.
One of their most striking strategies was a campaign titled “Letter from Your Circle”. Here, the producers reached out to the cast’s loved ones: friends, family, longtime supporters, to record heartfelt video messages. These were then played back as surprise reveals during promotional shoots, capturing raw, unscripted reactions. The footage felt less like staged marketing and more like a documentary of personal journeys.
This emphasis on authenticity and emotional connection didn’t stop at audience-facing content; it extended inward, to the cast themselves. As Red Circle’s marketing lead, Iremhen Ilozhobie, explained to Afrocritik, a campaign can only resonate if the actors genuinely believe in it.
Nigerian audiences remain largely star-driven, and without the cast’s visible investment, even the most inventive strategies risk falling flat. Recognising this, producer Nora Awolowo made a deliberate choice early on: she brought the actors into the fold, organising a private cast screening and inviting their feedback. That move not only earned the actors’ trust but also ensured they carried the film as passionately as their own.
The visual branding carried the same symbolic weight. Cast members appeared in clothing touched with shades of red. Beyond the striking aesthetic, the wardrobe choices tied directly to the film’s name, hinting at layers of meaning within the story and reinforcing the idea of a symbolic circle: personal, political, and communal.
The campaign also leaned heavily on personalisation. Months before cinema dates were even announced, the team introduced the hashtag #JoinTheCircle, building anticipation through a waitlist that positioned audiences as members of a growing community. A “Red Circle Hotline” was launched, with cast members personally calling fans. Membership cards were also made available through online links, giving audiences a sense of belonging that extended beyond the cinema.
The marketing team framed Red Circle as more than just a film; it was a community effort from conception to release. Ilozhobie emphasised that the project’s essence lay in collaboration—friends coming together without ego, driven by a shared determination to prove that youth and passion could carry a feature film. For him, the campaign wasn’t simply about promoting a title, but about amplifying that same spirit of friendship, relentlessness, and purpose that defined the film’s making.
This was bolstered by bold, physical marketing. Billboards dominated major cities, while vehicle rear-window posters—those street-level advertisements often overlooked in film campaigns—extended the film’s reach into everyday commutes. Every layer of the rollout worked to reinforce visibility, community, and identity.
The results spoke for themselves. Red Circle grossed over ₦100 million in just three weeks of release, cementing Nora Awolowo’s place in history as the youngest filmmaker to cross the ₦100 million mark at the Nollywood box office. While these figures may not rival Nollywood’s highest-grossing blockbusters, they remain impressive, particularly for a film produced by first-time producer. Red Circle’s performance demonstrates that intentionality, creativity, and audience engagement can yield remarkable returns, even without the backing of an established production powerhouse.
One could be tempted to think that Red Circle was able to break out of convention with its marketing because it had a decent enough budget to play with. But that assumption quickly crumbles when placed side by side with the indie space, where innovation often springs from constraint. Take Ebuka Njoku’s Uno: The F in Family (2024). Released in cinemas, the film also went on a campus tour — an unusual double-pronged approach born not out of luxury, but necessity.
For Njoku, the decision came down to curiosity and maximising revenue streams. With Nigeria’s distribution channels still underdeveloped, he saw university campuses as community cinemas: large halls that could host hundreds, and audiences primed for collective experiences. The model worked, though not without hurdles.
Each campus came with its own bureaucracy, calendar, and logistics nightmare. Yet when it clicked, it created something rare in Nollywood: a film screening that doubled as a communal event, complete with cast appearances and meet-and-greets. The result was louder cheers, more visceral reactions, and a sense of shared ownership that traditional cinemas rarely replicate.
Operating with limited resources, Njoku leaned heavily on social media and small-scale activations — merch drops, a media screening, and intimate meet-and-greets. Bigger-ticket items like billboards, TV campaigns, or engineered viral challenges were out of reach. But in his view, this leaner playbook became a kind of masterclass in indie marketing: focused, community-driven, and resourceful.
Asked what mainstream Nollywood could learn from indie hustles like his, Njoku is candid: the traffic flows both ways. Indies, he says, need the structure, scale, and financing of mainstream marketing. But the big players could benefit from taking more risks, being less rigid in their distribution choices, and remembering the audiences they’re serving. For him, there is no universal formula. Every film demands its own strategy, shaped by story, timing, and target audience. What matters most is ensuring the right people see the work — a lesson both indies and blockbusters alike are still grappling with.
Controversy has also become one of Nollywood’s go-to marketing levers, especially for romance-driven titles. The Bolaji Ogunmola–produced Summer Rain (2025) generated buzz around its extended kissing scene between Ogunmola and Daniel Etim Effiong, while Basketmouth’s A Ghetto Love Story (2024) leaned on carefully staged social media clips that fueled dating rumours with co-writer, Victoria Eze. Both succeeded in sparking conversation, but the question is, conversation about what?
Scandal is effective at grabbing attention, but attention does not always equal conversion. Unless it is channeled into ticket sales through targeted showtime pushes, regional activations, or digital calls-to-action, controversy risks becoming little more than fleeting noise. Summer Rain and A Ghetto Love Story proved the point: despite their genre-fitting tactics, they grossed ₦73 million and ₦88 million respectively — respectable figures, but hardly blockbuster returns compared to the scale of attention they generated. Those figures are even more disappointing when you consider the relative success of the romance genre at the box office. Two of the top ten highest-grossing Nollywood titles of all time are romance films. Reel Love (2025), which narrowly missed the top ten, grossed ₦356 million — without relying on controversy-driven marketing.
This does not mean controversy is without merit. It can be a useful spark in an industry that thrives on immediacy and spectacle. But leaning too heavily on scandal is risky. It prioritises momentary chatter over sustained engagement, and in the long run, Nollywood filmmakers need strategies that not only trend online but also put people in cinema seats.
We can praise the uniqueness of Red Circle’s marketing campaign, but it is important to note that it doesn’t exist in isolation. To fully grasp its significance, it helps to look at how audience-building and marketing have been imagined elsewhere. Across film and music industries, the playbook has always been the same: create hype, build community, and turn release into ritual. Hollywood, Old Nollywood, and Afrobeats have each shown different versions of this.
In Hollywood, spectacle has long been the hook. Blockbusters are less movies than events, supported by multi-million-dollar campaigns that flood timelines, billboards, podcasts, and talk shows months before release. Trailers drop like cultural earthquakes; premieres are televised; merchandise keeps the story alive beyond the cinema. Red Circle didn’t have the budget, but it understood the principle: make people feel as though missing the release meant missing out on a shared cultural moment.
Old Nollywood, by contrast, thrived on grassroots marketing. In the 1990s and early 2000s, producers relied on posters plastered on church boards and city walls, catchy radio mentions, road shows, and market activations that took films directly to the people. The strategy was simple: meet people where they already are. In many ways, Red Circle updated this ethos for the digital era — its “market square” was Twitter and TikTok, its posters were on Instagram stories, and its word-of-mouth spread through WhatsApp groups and meme culture.
Nigerian music artistes show yet another iteration. Artistes like Rema, ODUMODUBLVCK, and Asake have mastered the art of turning audiences into amplifiers. They lean on dedicated fan communities who spread songs across borders via live streams, YouTube uploads, Instagram skits, and TikTok dance challenges. This is perhaps the closest parallel to Red Circle’s approach: the film didn’t just sell tickets, it invited audiences to participate, remix, and spread the story until the campaign itself became entertainment.
These artistes rarely release music without a pre-set plan: teaser snippets on social media, influencer dance challenges, strategic collaborations, and countdown-driven hype campaigns. The pipeline is clear, the messaging consistent. In contrast, Nollywood often still feels improvised — marketing campaigns kick in late, rollouts lack sequencing, and momentum isn’t always sustained beyond the first few weeks of release.
Taken together, these examples show that while the mediums, budgets, and contexts differ, the underlying principles are consistent: campaigns succeed when they are deliberate, audience-conscious, and designed to create participation rather than passive consumption. Nollywood can borrow lessons from Hollywood’s precision, Old Nollywood’s grassroots ingenuity, and Afrobeats’ community engagement but the real challenge lies in translating those lessons into strategies that fit the unique rhythms of its own industry. Ultimately, what separates fleeting attention from lasting impact is not merely scale, spectacle, or formula, but intention: the thoughtfulness and care with which a marketing campaign reflects the story it seeks to tell.
Cinema will always balance art and commerce. Nollywood shows that the difference between noise and resonance lies in intentionality — in treating marketing not as a gimmick, but as part of the art itself. In this sense, Nollywood is not searching for a formula; it is searching for honesty. Marketing is not magic. It is a mirror reflecting not just the film, but the seriousness with which its makers believe it deserves to be seen.
Joseph Jonathan is a historian who seeks to understand how film shapes our cultural identity as a people. He believes that history is more about the future than the past. When he’s not writing about film, you can catch him listening to music or discussing politics. He tweets @Chukwu2big