For six years now and still counting, Hennessy’s Wild Rabbit campaign has brought to the fore, the untold and inspiring stories of creative across the world who exemplify the brand’s mantra ‘Never stop. Never settle.’ These campaigns have, over the years, featured renowned personalities and celebrities including award-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese, as well as music icons Erykah Badu and rapper Nas.
Hennessy Cognac beamed the spotlight of this year’s ‘Never stop. Never settle’ campaign on Africa, to honour one of Africa’s foremost Video directors and CEO of AJE Filmworks Limited – Ani James.
One of Nigeria’s most sought-after video directors and cinematographers, Ani explains that his passion for cinematography or film-making started when he was young, and coincided with the evolution of the Nigerian music industry. This evolution resulted in the need for professionalism in music video production.
To Ani, the concept, ‘Never Stop. Never Settle’ as espoused by Hennessey, basically means that in every sphere of creative human endeavour, there is no ideal. Whatever feat attained “can never be good enough. There’s always something better than the best you can ever do.”
This has played out amply in life as irrepressible self-belief and unbridled passion as driven him to focus on his dream – without stopping, without settling – and make his way to the top amongst Africa’s A-list video directors today.
“I wanted to sell my homeland, Nigeria. To tell the world that Nigeria has the best music, the best stories and some of the best talents; that something good can come out of Nigeria.”
This, he has been able to do. But there is still a great deal to come.