“Stories celebrate the moments of our lives. We might be blessed to live through each in the present, but how quickly they are spent, to become only memories that we spend the rest of our lives protecting with all our might, from fading with time. So, let us create memories worth fighting for”.
Novelist Rotimi Olaniyan got a character, Iya Agba, wife of the Balogun Ijeru, to share this wisdom with Omitirin, the lead character in his magnificent debut novel, Where The Waters Recede.
There are many stories to the lives of this brilliant scholar, integrated marketing communications expert, and teacher. Is it the fact of following his father’s footsteps to attend the University of Nottingham, teach there and have a child also go there? Is it the broad scope of his education combining training in Accounting and Marketing? Or his marriage across Nigeria’s ethnic barriers that love ignores?
Dr Rotimi Olaniyan was in the fourth cohort of the Management Trainee programme at Cadbury Nigeria in 1990. That programme has justified itself with the exploits of the alumni. We shared many bachelor moments in the newly developing Iju-Ajuwon neigbourhood.
The official bio tells part of his rich story.
Dr Rotimi Olaniyan is a senior lecturer in marketing and a practice-oriented scholar, with teaching responsibilities in Strategic Marketing; Leadership and Employability; Marketing Metrics and Analytics; Marketing Innovation; and International Business, at both undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education levels at Nottingham Trent University.
He supervises PhD and DBA students with research interests in Brand and Marketing Management and Communications, Entrepreneurial Marketing and Innovation, and International Marketing strategy, particularly within the emerging market context. Career overview Rotimi has had a broad-spectrum marketing industry career across a few countries and cultures, including the UK, spanning 30 years.
His experience covers Integrated Marketing Communications, Brand and Strategic Marketing Management, Innovation, Sales and Trade Marketing, and Data-Driven Marketing, CRM and Consumer Insights while working for multinationals like Cadbury’s and Colgate Palmolive.
He has operated as a business founder and served as Managing Director and country manager for brand and marketing communications consultancies such as the TBWA/TEQUILA international advertising agency network. He has partnered at the C-suite level across several marketing campaigns to help build some of the world’s most important global consumer brands.
In addition, he has sat on start-up boards, including one of Africa’s fast-scaling mobile money payment technology start-ups. He is a former Vice President of Nigeria’s Chartered Marketing Institute and Past President of the Experiential Marketing Industry trade group. He currently serves as a visiting lecturer in marketing and communications to the Pan-Atlantic University Lagos, where he also taught PG students for three years.
Rotimi is also an NBS Alumni Fellow. He gained his DBA in 2015 with his thesis, which developed a model for better understanding the environmental munificence of entrepreneurship at the community level. Happy Birthday.
