It takes a village to put an ad together – ARCON DG
By Felicia Nwosu
Coming at the heels of the ban on the use of foreign models and voice-over artists in Nigerian commercials by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria, ARCON, which has raised a lot of dust in the industry, Dr. Lekan Fadolapo, the pioneer Director-General of the Council, has posited that it takes a village to put an ad together because advertising operates in an ecosystem made up of many units. The ARCON DG made this position during a close chat with Benjamin Okoh and Tony Ekweaga on “Brands and You”, on Classic 97.3 FM.
“I also know that sometimes some clients will say, we are running a global campaign, how do you bring this home? If you are going to put an ad together, it is a combination of so many units. You need Light Engineer, Sound Engineer, and Models, and because you need models, you will also need a makeup artist, costumiers, a voiceover artiste, and many more. So it takes a village to produce an ad in the modern day. It is so bad that even ambiance, you cannot get in Nigeria and so when these things are done, they bring it back to us to buy and one of the things that you need to understand is that advertising must resonate with culture, religion and with the people.”
The ARCON boss stated that the essence of the ban is also to ensure that Nigeria’s advertising industry is at par with the global standard of practice and also to promote local content.
“Now, if we need to be relevant in this 21st century, we need to be able to do the mandate that is required of us to ensure ethical practice in advertising. We need to have a new law. First of all, in between, there is globalization and there is localisation. We have not said don’t do your foreign commercials, but when it comes to execution, you must do the execution with us. We need to build our own industry. Advertising thrives on ancillary services, that is, service providers. We have a tripod, the client, the agency, and the media. Beyond those tripods, there are service providers, such as voice-over artists, makeup artists, and others. All these service systems are near collapse because of lack of patronage.”
The advertising regulator said he understands that planning a single campaign across markets is geared towards profitability and reduction in production cost. He appealed that such should not be at the detriment of the growth of the industry and Nigerian youths. The industry head explained that the new move of banning foreign models and voice-over artists is aimed at creating jobs for the teaming youths in the country.
“As a government agency, one of the directives we were given, is to create jobs. What happens to us when you bring commercials shot abroad to run here? That means our youths will not be engaged, the money will not come to our system. Are you saying that no one can do your commercial here; do you need to import voice? You can’t be doing business here without looking back to investing in our economy”, he reasoned.
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