How I became a POS meme...
Or how every POS kiosk unwittingly uses my photo for adverts
I didn’t intend to end up like this.
Nobody does.
You see, POS Vendors had a secret meeting and decided that I, in all my resplendent sugar daddyness, am the poster boy for advertising their businesses.
Back in 2018, the Fintech co I work for wanted to dive into the POS space and since we didn’t have Glo ambassador money at the time (psst….we do now), we decided it’d be a brilliant idea to use ourselves as the models and position the brand/product as a “for the people, with the people“ kinda message.
On the day of the photoshoot, I showed up with my colleagues from work.
The studio was buzzing with activity, people moving props around, setting up lights and from nowhere, the marketing lead at the time whips out this poorly-tailored top and tosses it at me.
”No way!”
”Yes way”, she quips. “See as you chubby nau, you be like Alaba trader“
Every now and then, my friends send me photos of like these—
At first, I’d get worked into a frenzy and ask them to take it down or demand some kind of recompense but after a while, I stopped caring. It had become almost hilarious, finding photos of myself in kiosks, shops, websites, and ads.
I can only think that the reason why agents like using the image is because it feels relatable. I mean, look at the photo— it looks like the average Nigerian joe who’s got a shop and really wants to do business with you. If that photo helps a business reach more customers, I guess that’s some good I’ve helped bring to the world.
Sidelines
Tomorrow, I’ll be hosting a free workshop on designing better dashboards with Figma. You can register for the event here, and to sweeten the deal— if you register, you get a 15% discount on the Ovalay Academy Product Design course (which we’ll share after the event)
Tola Alabi’s LogoMarch 4 will be coming up this march. You can register for the program here
I’m doing some research on Designers in relation to their portfolios and I’d greatly appreciate it if you could fill out this quick survey. It’d take less than 20secs.
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