Before building a name that has now become synonymous with Nigeria’s advertising industry, Steve Babaeko, born on June 1, 1971, had spent his childhood with his family in Kabba, Kogi State, Owerri in Imo state and Kaduna state.

Babaeko (Lagos man or the man from Lagos) was not his family name; it was the first name given to his grandfather by his great grandfather to honour a Lagos lawyer who won him a significant court case against the monarch of his village. The generation after, including Steve’s father, who served in the Nigerian Army, adopted the name as their last name.

His parents had almost nothing. While his late father served in the Nigerian Army, his mother was a trader who turned their small room into a beer depot. Steve had tough times growing up as the eldest among his parents’ six children.

“We all lived in a room,” he recalled in an interview with The Sun newspaper. “There was this little curtain dividing the room. So, there was a frontal part where we had chairs, my dad’s table with his stereo system and records, and a few things. Adjacent to the frontal part, we had the iron bed where my parents slept, and under the iron bed, there were mats. So, whenever we wanted to sleep, we would bring out the mats and sleep. It was tough. If you ate once a day, you were lucky. It was tough growing up.”

It was in 1981 that he got the first real glimpse of his family’s poverty status.

“I was only 10 years old when I realised, for the first time in my life, that my family was acutely poor,” he told Forbes in 2019.

This reality helped him through the many rough patches he walked through and fuelled his ambition, driving him to make the most of any opportunity. It also fuelled his determination to go to school amidst the adversity he faced from an uncle who believed his education at a government college was too expensive for the family. He asked Steve to drop out and register as an apprentice at a fridge repairer workshop.

An undated photo of Babaeko (left) and Pascal Anyaso during the formative days of his advertising career at MC&A. Photo: Instagram/Steve Babaeko. 

He was confident about proving his uncle wrong. For Steve, confidence and strong will have never been an issue. Despite the adversity, He bagged a degree in Theatre Arts from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in Kaduna. After the mandatory national youth service, Steve recognised that for him to bring any of his dreams to fruition, he would have to move far away from home. In 1995, he packed his bag and moved to Lagos, where he would have to squat with a chef at Durban hotel, now Golden Tulip, for two years.

“The moment I made up my mind that I wanted to be an advertising practitioner, I knew I had to come to Lagos because all the major advertising platforms are in Lagos,” he recalled. “Of course, the biggest fear was, would I even find a job? Lagos is notorious for breaking you if you are unlucky. I was apprehensive because I didn’t want to fall on the side; I didn’t want to be one of those people that Lagos ends up breaking.”
For those two years, Steve would stand before a mirror daily motivating himself. “For me not to be successful in this town, then the beach must dry up.”

He saw in Lagos, the city where his dream would thrive, and the city enhanced his growth, fame and fortune.

The Advertising Journey

After settling in Lagos, he hunted for a job for two months before eventually landing his first Advertising job with MC&A as a copywriter/radio-TV executive. He spent five years on the first job and moved to Prima Garnet Ogilvy, where he spent another five years before he was seconded to 141 Worldwide (now Nitro 121) as Creative Director for seven years.

At Prima Garnet Ogilvy he met Yetunde Ayeni, one of Nigeria’s leading photographers, who became Mrs Babaeko in 2006 and mother of his three boys.

“What strikes me in him was his energy and friendliness,” Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko. Photo: Instagam/Steve Babaeko.

“She was working for a photo studio at Opebi. She is a photographer, unarguably one of the best. They made a presentation on how they could partner with Prima Garnet. I was like ‘this babe is incredibly beautiful’, but beyond the beauty when I finally got to know her, I was like ‘this woman is beautiful from the inside as well’, and that was it,” Steve said as he recalled how he met Yetunde.

When he decided to ask Yetunde to marry him, his creative skills came to play again in his romantic life as if he was handling an advertising campaign.

Yetunde grew up in Germany, where her mother came from, and Steve decided to take her to a place in Germany where she had lost a shoe years before they met.

“She had told me a story about a bridge where she lost a shoe. I took her there and said something stupid like ‘this same place where you lost the shoe, I want it to be the same place where you would find a husband’,” Steve said.

“What strikes me in him was his energy and friendliness,” Yetunde told Neusroom.

For more than two decades, Steve has been actively involved in creating some of Africa’s most iconic advertising and marketing campaigns. Still fresh in memory is the ‘Proudly Nigerian’ campaign for British American Tobacco, the ‘Now You’re Talking’ campaign for Etisalat, ‘You Need A New Bank’ campaign for Diamond Bank, among many others.

Jenkins Alumona, a marketing communications expert and CEO of Strategic Outcomes Limited (SOL), told Neusroom that what sells Steve easily is his understanding of all the pillars of advertising work.

“I had no doubt he was going to do very well. He comes across to me as a leader, a natural-born leader,” Kelechi Amadi-Obi Photo: Instagram/Steve Babaeko. 

“From the client service part to the strategy part to the creative part. When one person understands the three, the person stands out,” Alumona said.

His outstanding personality and works made him a reference point in Advertising classes in tertiary institutions across Nigeria. In one of those classes, this writer first heard about Babaeko and got acquainted with the name.

Steve may not know how popular he is among mass communication students in tertiary institutions across Nigeria. Some graduates of mass communication told Neusroom they admire his consistency, hard work and perseverance.

The Birth of X3M Ideas

Alumona says when Steve left 141 Worldwide in 2012 to start X3M Ideas, some people wished him well, but many didn’t.

“When you are leaving an agency, there would be those who do not wish for you to leave, both superiors and subordinates. It’s not unusual.”

Steve hadn’t set out to start his advertising agency. Although he had floated X3M Music in 2008 while he was with 141 Worldwide, and regularly promoted music artistes, X3M Ideas came when Steve clocked 40 in 2011. He started in August 2012 with eight staff, after 17 years of exposure to the ins and outs of advertising.

“To be honest, it never crossed my mind that I was going to own an agency. It all happened circumstantially at best – being unplanned or not dreamt about,” Steve said.

The seed money that started X3M Ideas was the fund Steve had kept to buy himself the latest model of Range Rover Sport when he clocked 40 in 2011, but Yetunde, his wife, convinced him it was not the right decision at that time.

“I told my wife, ‘I know you are not happy with this decision, but I am going to pay tomorrow’, and my wife told me something she had never said before. She said, ‘Steve, do you know you are being stupid?’ I was like, ‘what do you mean?’ She said people who buy N8m worth of cars usually have N80m in their accounts. How much do you have? I guess I was a little upset at what she said, but I came to my senses and realised that she meant well,” he said.

“Steve is the true professional who always goes the extra mile to deliver on client briefs,” Martin Mabutho. Photo: Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko.

Yetunde said buying the car would have given him the feeling that he was already there, although he wasn’t at the time.

“The car would have been a setback, but it (X3M Ideas) would have still happened, maybe at a later time,” she told Neusroom.

Between 2012 when he started X3M Ideas, and now, Steve has become one of Africa’s more admired advertising CEOs.

“From the first take. It was obvious he would move from challenger to market leader,” Adebisi Idowu, former Vice President, Marketing, Etisalat Nigeria (now 9Mobile), told Neusroom.

Idowu gave the nod that landed X3M Ideas one of its first most significant accounts (Etisalat Nigeria) when it started in 2012.

“Steve approached me personally and told me he was setting up shop. Incidentally, some fifth columnist had told him that I was the only one between him and the brand transition to his agency,” Idowu said. “The discussion was for five minutes, and he had my full support. I also had the ears of the then CMO who asked for my opinion that same week before sealing the deal. I had the power of influence, and I’m happy with the decision I made that night. The next day was the beginning of history.”

One of Nigeria’s leading creative photographers, Kelechi Amadi-Obi, said when Steve left 141, he had no doubt “he was going to do very well.”

“He comes across to me as a leader, a natural-born leader. Once you attain that leadership tree starting on your own, there’s no brainer in terms of how successful you can become,” Amadi-Obi told Neusroom.

Taiwo Agboola, the CEO of 7even Interactive, a Lagos-based Advertising agency, had worked with Steve for barely a year at 141 when Steve told him he was leaving to start X3M and asked if he would like to join the team.

“I didn’t even think about it,” Agboola told Neusroom. “We were in the walkway, and he said this is what I’m planning to do. Do you want to join the team? He’s somebody I believe in, and I said if this is what you want to do, then let’s do it. It was as simple as that.”

Agboola admitted that it was tough at the beginning. “I remember us going for like three pitches in one day. We didn’t start out like we were newbies. We were always on our feet working long hours, there were times we were working back to back, seven days a week. He always told us then, ‘don’t call us a new agency, we are not a new agency. We are an agency that is in the mix and we want to punch above our weight, we want to be known in the industry’.”

Beyond overseeing the company and driving his supportive and talented team, Steve also spends time with his team and ensures each team member feels valued and important to the company.
“When he comes in the morning, he goes around, talks to the people. He takes everybody out on a Friday, we hang out, people pour out their minds, he listens, proffers solutions, even if you are having issues with a client,” Agboola said.

Seven years after X3M Ideas started, a PwC report in 2019 says Nigeria’s Advertising industry had grown to become a $450 million industry. At that time, Steve’s X3M Ideas had cemented its place in the top league of agencies accounting for a large chunk of the revenue.

Expansion and Growth

X3M Ideas, with branches in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia, holds a big part in Nigeria’s $450 billion advertising industry and in the global creative world.

When the company started in 2012, Etisalat was one of its first and biggest clients. Steve had led the campaign for the launch of the telecom company in 2008 when he was at 141 Worldwide. In 2017, X3M Ideas resigned from the Etisalat account and added Nigeria’s second-largest telecom company, Globacom to its portfolio.

Presently, X3M Ideas has Dangote, Multichoice, and FrieslandCampina WAMCO (Peak Milk) among many others in its portfolio.

To understand Steve fully and how he has been able to drive the growth of X3M, one needs to know how he does his work like someone who is going to get fired if he doesn’t do it, despite being the CEO.

Ayeni Adekunle, Babaeko’s friend, and CEO of BHM says “Steve used everything he could to change his life, and to build his dreams. But as you’ll find out, that’s often just the start. The most important part is sustaining what you’ve built, and not using the same hands you used to build, to ruin it all. Steve is focused on surpassing even his own goals; driven to make sure he never goes back to where he’s coming from. We all have a lot to learn from him.”

Steve and Ayeni cover the September 2019 edition of the Forbes Africa magazine. Photo: Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko. 

For Martin Mabutho, Chief Customer Officer of MultiChoice Nigeria, Steve is the true professional who always goes the extra mile to deliver on client briefs.

“Always eager to jump into the trenches with his team and make it happen. Definitely, someone you would rather have on your team than on the competitor’s side,” Mabutho told Neusroom.

Taiwo Agboola who left 141 with Steve in 2012 to start X3M Ideas says, “if he (Steve) sets out to achieve something, he methodologically goes after such and makes sure it’s done. He doesn’t mind how it’s done, but methodologically, he’ll chart that path towards that goal and make sure it is done.”

To the legion of his fans who are primarily undergraduates and young professionals in the creative industry, Steve Babaeko is the representation of the personality they dream of becoming in the creative world.

At 50, he has become a formidable force in the media and advertising industry. And as a visionary, he is now diversifying his business interests.

Steve and Yetunde, his wife, through the Babaeko Farms in his hometown Odobata, Kabba, are moving ahead of time to solve a looming food crisis that experts have predicted may hit Nigeria in 2050.

The United Nations has predicted that Nigeria’s population will hit over 400 million by 2050. Feeding this population is going to be a big challenge if food production does not increase as Nigeria remains a food import-dependent country.

The Babaeko Farm Ltd is Steve and Yetunde’s response to the looming food crisis experts say may hit Nigeria soon. Photo: Instagram/Steve Babaeko.

Outside helping brands design marketing campaigns that sell, Steve said sometimes, he pretends to play golf.

Yetunde also confirms that any sliver of time he gets outside X3M is spent playing golf and on his phone.

“It could look rude and annoying for a person to be constantly on his phone, but then you also have to understand it is part of his job to be up to date.

The last two decades have taken Steve and his growing advertising agency across the world, extending his reputation as a global creative leader beyond Africa. In 2020, Steve was elected President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) after serving as its Vice President.

When he is not helping brands design marketing campaigns, Steve spends part of his free time playing golf. Photo: Instagram/Steve Babaeko.

Increasingly, Steve has been able to put his distinctive footprint on Africa’s advertising industry and is now extending beyond Africa.

In 2019, AdWeek named him among the Top 100 Creatives in the world. He is also a member of the jury at the New York Advertising Festival, the Loeries, and Cristal Awards. In 2021, he was selected by the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival organisers as a member of the jury for the 2021 Edition of its Young Lions Creativity Awards.

Steve has become an inspiration to a new generation of Nigerian creatives. Having climbed the ladder himself from the lowest stratum of society, many now draw inspiration from his trajectory and story.

Steve told Neusroom one major thing he wants to be remembered for is “being the man who contributed a little quota in making the life of the future generation a little easier.”

The Steve we know – Wife, Associates

If there is one unique quality that has stood Steve out over the years, Yetunde, his wife, believes it is integrity.

“Apart from his name being unique, he always protects that name with his integrity.” Idowu says Steve is a creative genius and “creatives fledge in unrestricted territories. Very focused and organised, Steve has an unusual ability to make very complex things simple via creative sequence. He has now become the “to go to” agency for bright minds and groundbreaking ideas.”

Mabutho of MultiChoice Nigeria believes Steve is obviously wildly read and very exposed.
“He continuously wants to proactively anticipate challenges and is always just a phone call away,” Mabutho says. “Steve has that ‘can do’ attitude that puts any client at ease – for a brand that’s as complex as DStv, we have managed to build and sustain our market leadership position for many years. It’s hard to imagine not having them (X3M) as our partners – they are dependable, young and dynamic.”

“Since he’s already made his mark in advertising, I’m sure he’ll like to try other projects with the same energy as he dove into advertising,” Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko. Photo: Yetunde Ayeni-Babaeko.

As Steve heads into a new age cycle, Yetunde says there’s no slowing down, and more is yet to come.

“Since he’s already made his mark in advertising, I’m sure he’ll like to try other projects with the same energy as he dove into advertising. There’s no slowing down, but there’ll definitely be a change of direction.”

Alumona believes there’s still much to look out for in Steve.

“Babaeko is 50 in age, but probably 35 in his mind and in his brain. Whatever we’ve seen under the right environment, we haven’t seen anything yet.”

Ayeni says he looks forward to “all the amazing things already planned out for the next couple of years.”

Amadi-Obi who sees Steve as the creative guy who doesn’t hesitate to bring creativity and vision to life, says with Steve’s “no-nonsense approach to work and consistency of effort, I do not see anything telling me that they are slowing down.”