Actor Abeiku Sagoe to universities: "The creative industry needs marketers"

Thespian lamented the lack of marketers in the creative industry space, which had prevented the space from being properly marketed to the general public.

The thespian demanded that the space receive immediate attention and efforts, beginning with educational institutions that would train professionals to fill the gap.

Mr. Sagoe presented this idea at the just concluded third Graphic Showbiz, which was held in Accra in partnership with Multichoice Ghana and has the title Future of Ghana Movie Industry: Bright or Bleak?

Even if the marketing sector of the creative industry was a viable one and its practitioners might generate comparable returns when properly studied in addition to altering the fortunes of the entertainment industry, Mr. Sagoe claimed that there was very little interest in it.

"Marketers are trained by business colleges. I think the best thing we can do is visit the university and speak with the administrators to see if the entertainment sector can be included in the training of other professionals.

"There are a lot of marketers here, and all they want to do is promote tomatoes and rice. We must present our industry to them as a promising field they should investigate and teach some of these young people to take over.

He asserted that the creative business would finally come into the forefront if more marketers paid attention to it, especially the film industry.

"If we had enough marketers promoting the industry to the outside world, I'm convinced more people would get interested in what we are doing and that marketing professionals would profit as a result."

The producer of Back Home from Justice said that because filmmakers had not made an effort to gather resources to forge a strong industry front, Ghana's film industry had advanced very slowly over a protracted period of time.

In order to advance the film business, he advocated that filmmakers band together in these trying times, identify the urgent problems that need to be fixed, and pool resources.

"Let's work together to develop the sector. We have spent time in our respective spaces and have made very little progress; working alone is challenging. It's comparable to an investor wishing to construct a factory for producing tomatoes.

The work of an accountant, a machine operator, a human resource manager, etc., cannot be done by you. They can observe and learn from other industries how many professionals must work together to keep a factory running, he said.