Inside the New Approach to Engineering Visibility for Africa’s Top Business Executives

Mary Nnah

In an era where influence is increasingly mediated by perception, and where the power to shape narratives can alter careers, markets, and public sentiment, a new category of strategist is emerging in Africa’s leadership landscape. At the forefront of this shift is Sam Adeoye, a Lagos-based visibility intelligence practitioner, quietly becoming the trusted partner of executives, founders, and public figures who cannot afford reputational guesswork.

What distinguishes Adeoye is not only the sophistication of his work, but the intellectual engine powering it: the EPIC Framework — Earliness, Proximity, Impact, and Change — which he developed to decode how people become newsworthy and remain so.

For those who have worked with him, this framework has become a reliable compass for navigating the chaotic intersection of journalism, public relations, corporate ambition, and public expectation.

But to understand why EPIC sounds like a no-brainer, one must understand Adeoye himself, a professional whose career is both wide in scope and unusually deep in context.

A Career Forged Across the Spectrum of Media and Influence
Adeoye’s journey began in the newsroom. Beginning as a stringer at The Guardian in 2003, he later worked as a staff reporter the same newspaper between 2005 and 2007. During this time, he wrote feature articles for Life magazine and The Guardian on Sunday, while also producing the weekly marketing column Marketing Edge. He became known for sharp cultural observation and the ability to identify early the people and movements shaping Nigeria’s creative and business landscapes.

From journalism, he transitioned into advertising. Over the next decade, he served in leadership roles at several elite agencies, including Verdant Zeal, 141 Worldwide, DKK Lagos, and McCann Worldgroup Lagos, and Huce Valeris, leading creative teams, shaping campaigns, and building brands across categories ranging from FMCG to finance to entertainment. His work touched global brands like Coca-Cola, Netflix, MasterCard, Facebook, MTN, PZ Cussons, Ecobank, and others.

At Verdant Zeal, he rose from Deputy Manager to Senior Manager in less than two years, earning the Staff of the Year 2009 honour and later becoming the founding Chief Operating Officer (COO) of RedGecko, the group’s PR subsidiary, his first formal responsibility for building public relations systems and tone-of-voice architectures for clients such as Bristow Helicopters and Main One Cable Company.

At DKK Nigeria, he worked right next to the Managing Director, Temitope Jemerigbe to win new accounts and resuscitate the struggling agency, growing its client list from one to 12 within two years while training new creative talent to produce work competitive on international stages.

At Huce Valeris, he served as Creative Director for the Netflix’s digital PR and social content, overseeing editorial and creative direction across Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. This tapestry of experience across journalism, advertising, and digital culture eventually led him to public relations leadership.

Stewarding the Reputation of One of Africa’s Most Valuable Telecom Brands
In 2023, Adeoye became Head of Public Relations at Airtel Nigeria, one of the country’s most influential corporate brands. In this role, he managed corporate PR, product communications, CSR storytelling, executive visibility, speechwriting, internal communications, stakeholder engagement, PR agency oversight, and multimedia content production.

His tenure included introducing new internal communications channels, such as a podcast, a revitalised internal social platform via Viva Engage, and an interactive culture movement designed to boost employee morale and engagement.

He also led the planning and execution of the first series of Airtel Media Roundtable, the company’s quarterly gathering of top editors, correspondents, and industry analysts, providing a consistent pipeline of media goodwill and relationship capital.

These experiences — across editorial rooms, creative departments, and PR war rooms — would prove pivotal to the development of E.P.I.C.

EPIC: A System for Understanding the Architecture of Visibility
Adeoye describes EPIC as “the science of newsworthiness.” In his view, journalists do not select stories randomly; there is a logic, sometimes unconscious, behind what becomes front-page material and what fades into obscurity.

“Earliness is the advantage of being the first to say or do something,” he explains. “Proximity is the subject’s relevance to audience, geography, culture, economics, or emotional interest. Impact is the demonstrable or perceived consequence of their work, and Change is the element of transformation, be it personal, institutional, or societal.”

These principles, Adeoye argues, govern the entire visibility economy. “If you are lacking in all four, the media is under no obligation to care,” he says.

EPIC is not merely a thought exercise; it is the operational backbone of Adeoye’s approach to executive PR, by which he helps senior leaders convert their lived achievements into visibility assets that unlock opportunities — board seats, investment, regulatory goodwill, invitations, partnership credibility, and elite recognition.

The Rise of Visibility Intelligence
The language Adeoye uses—visibility intelligence—reflects a larger shift happening globally. While traditional PR remains essential, it no longer fully accounts for the speed, fragmentation, and competitive intensity of modern attention markets.
Visibility intelligence, as he defines it, is the discipline of applying editorial logic, cultural trend-mapping, psychological insight, and strategic timing to a leader’s public presence. It is rooted in behavioural understanding: what audiences notice, trust, celebrate, or reject. “Publicity is volume,” he says, “but visibility is velocity and direction.”

A New Archetype of African Strategist
What makes Adeoye’s work notable is its intellectuality. Unlike traditional PR practitioners who rely primarily on relationships or tactical publicity, he merges newsroom instincts, creative conceptual thinking, digital ecosystem literacy, and corporate reputation stewardship.
This multilayered background has produced a strategist who leverages power at several resolutions: narrative power, reputational power, cultural power, and media power.
His appointment as a Grand Jury Member at the New York Festivals Advertising Awards in 2020 and LAIF Award (Lagos Advertising and Ideas Festival) Jury member both in 2018 and 2025 further cemented his status as a global evaluator of storytelling and creative influence.

Today, Adeoye’s formula is becoming a magnet for rising and established leaders who understand that influence is no longer accidental. His promise is simple: “If they have sustained career experience, everyone story has Earliness, Proximity, Impact, or Change, and from that we find the angle the world should not ignore.”
It is a promise backed by two decades of insight across multiple industries, continents, and cultures.
As the competition for visibility intensifies across Africa’s business and political spheres, voices like Adeoye’s are shaping the future of leadership perception and redefining what it means to be seen, understood, and valued.