Advertising experts expect action points from APCON soon
By Felicia Nwosu
Commending the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) for its strategic move and to step up ethical dictates of the advertising industry and as well protect it from unwholesome practices through the inauguration of the AISOP, advertising experts in the Integrated Marketing Communications space, have also revealed that their expectations is to see action points from APCON this year.
They noted that the apex regulator no doubt has the support of various sectoral groups but urged the council to back up the reform with stringent actions in order not to be seen as it was formally perceived as a “toothless bull dog”.
Steve Babaeko, Chief Creative Officer of X3M Ideas and President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), pointed out some of the steps taken by his sectoral group in facilitating strict adherence and compliance to the new guidelines. This, he revealed, includes heading the working group behind the inaugurated monitoring unit of AAAN to ensure compliance with AISOP.
”We expect fairness, steadfastness, being able to follow through because making a law is not just enough, you have to be able to bring justice, bring the people who are fluting your law to account that what we expect to see. The AISOP as a law has been passed since October 6th, 2021. We want to see beyond just passing the law to say look, let us check, are people obeying this law, if people are not obeying it, how do we bring to justice people who are fluting the law. It is within APCON and power to make sure that they enforce this law. I like to see more enforcement going forward, so far so good, I will give Dr. Lekan Fadolapo a big pass mark for the innovation that he is bringing into the industry and all of the things he is doing to create an enabling environment for us to do business.”
Lanre Adisa, MD/CEO Noah’s Ark Communications submitted that, the essence of the reform is to create a balance and exchange of value in partnership while eliminating a master servant relationship among business partners.
“APCON has done well in terms of starting up that process, so the next thing will be how well it will be implemented, and a lot of that will depend on how we the sectoral bodies help APCON flag the things out that are flouting the set rules going forward.”
Kemi Fabusoro, the Director/Executive Secretary of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), in her view said bringing the offenders to book will help to achieve an effective, result-oriented advertising framework.
She noted: “With the updated framework, we will be able to capture everything that we have ever wanted to push as an association and we will also protect our members. The issue of the framework also looks at these other things; so that when people go against these things, there will be severe penalties for it. Once we are able to do that, I believe the future of advertising is very bright.”
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