Former AAAN President canvasses for strategic communication plans for Nigeria @60
The Federal Government has been advised to think towards constituting a consortium of professional advertising and marketing communication agencies to create a world-class communications campaign for Nigeria at 60.
Giving the advice was a foremost marketing communications industry practitioner, Bunmi Oke, while speaking in an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE in Lagos.
Oke who is CEO/Lead Consultant at Ladybird Communications Limited opined that as the Nigerian nation turns 60 in the coming year 2020, it was expedient on the government to think in the direction of creating a marketable world-class campaign to celebrate such a landmark event.
According to the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) former President, government alone could not singlehandedly work on creating such a landmark communication campaign, but working through the relevant ministry, government could collaborate with a carefully selected consortium of professional communication agencies to produce a globally acceptable creative campaign for the celebration.
She stated further that through creating such a consortium of agencies, government could have gone a long way to jumpstart and encourage the much propagated collaboration and consolidation process amongst operating firms in Nigeria’s marketing and communications industry.
On the possibility of attaining such a consolidation process, same way it occurred in the banking and insurance sectors of the economy, the veteran practitioner expressed optimism that such consolidation was achievable in the industry, adding that in the past, agencies collaborated within albeit informally.
“That’s a possibility because I really don’t see why that cannot be achieved. People do collaborate in the past although informally. We have people that collaborated but informally. I think that if government were to bring up for example a much more consolidated project I am sure agencies would be more than happy to come together to form consortiums to work on government projects because that would be a necessary scale.
“Just like what happened in the insurance companies and the banks because when you realize that without it government is not going to give you a business, am sure you have no choice but to consolidate, so it still comes back to the way it is done and it happens in almost every industry, ” she said.
She lamented that past and present governments in the country demonstrated lack of adequate knowledge and poor understanding of the importance and place of marketing communications in the growth and development of every economy, pointing out that government was yet to come to the full realisation of the need to deploy the expertise of home grown professional communications experts in developing its campaign objectives.
She regretted that for about the fourth year running government had shown reluctance at reconstituting the governing council of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) which is apex regulatory body for the advertising profession in Nigeria, adding that government was ignorant of the role of communication in the growth and advancement of leading economies of the world.
“We all know that our professional body which regulates the industry has not been able to do that effectively for the last four years because they’ve not had an effective Council in place and I’m talking about APCON. We all know that’s a very big thorn in the flesh of our country and we don’t know why we have allowed such an industry body to be lying low. It gives the impression that they don’t know the value of such a regulatory body to allow such to be in comatose for so long.
“I think it’s very inimical to our development, but having said that, I think also there is a need to let government engage professionals for policies and campaigns,” Oke noted.
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