Debonair entrepreneur, Rotimi Bankole, continues to add multiple feathers to himself and his corporate organisations.
At this year’s edition of Marketing Edge Awards of Excellence, Bankole’s SBI Media and Streams Networks each won five trophies, while Bankole himself was named the Outstanding Media CEO of the Year.
But for Bankole, the movement to the business peak has not come easy. As a young boy, he internalised the messages of hope and tenacity that his father, Prophet Frederick Bankole, preached all the time to his congregation. According to him, those exhortations were his first lessons of hope and faith.
Also, Bankole grew up admiring his advertising guru uncle, Jimi Awosika, who inspired him to venture into the media and communications business. However, having studied Mass Communication at The Polytechnic, Ibadan with a Master’s degree in Communication Studies from Lagos State University, Bankole’s journey was not the mythic set-out-and-catch-a-big-break sort of story.
Meeting his first client, Sim Shagaya, founder of Konga in 2013, Bankole discovered that the young tech entrepreneur was also in the middle of figuring out – and helping to pioneer – the Nigerian ecommerce industry. He immediately recognised the same brand of optimism in Shagaya and for a year, toiled with the tech company with little or no pay. Eventually, their belief in one another paid off. Today, Bankole’s SBI Media and Streams Networks work for notable brands such as Tecno, Boomplay, Infinix, Itel, Access Bank, Green Africa Airways, Copterjet, and 9mobile among others.