AAAN President blames agencies’ woes on clients’ “promiscuous” business attitudes
President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), Ikechi Odigbo, has risen in strong criticism of some multinational client organisations in the country, opining that present predicament being faced by advertising agencies were due to the clients’ “unfaithful and promiscuous” business attitudes.
Addressing a forum of advertising agency practitioners, media operatives and IMC industry stakeholders at the recently AAAN’s 2020 business outlook seminar which held in Lagos, the association president lamented the various woes currently bedeviling advertising agency practitioners which includes but not limited to worsening economic downturn, shrinking margins of business, rising overheads, erratic cashflow and punishing payments cycles arising from what he termed clients’ “unfaithful and promiscuous” business attitudes.
Odigbo, dwelling largely on the recent economic reports of the Federal Government that stated positive economic indices, observed that Nigeria had everything needed to become a leading economy notably amongst which was a fast growing labour force, but unfortunately lacks the benefit of quality education.
According to him, Nigeria has abundant natural resources that could be seen as a handicap owing to her over dependence on oil and, indeed, up-to-the-moment positive indices which is the fact of very high adoption rate of digital technology.
He, however, regretted that despite the huge promise to become a major economic powerhouse, Nigeria continued to lag behind as it is presently a country with the poorest people, and doing business remained a huge challenge despite some recent progress made by the present administration.
He noted that on the overall the private sector growth remained sluggish having not yet recovered the pre-recession levels as this had negatively impacted the corporate sector and advertising agencies in particular.
The adman added that the government had in the mist of all these developments initiated several policies to galvanise the economy, key amongst which was the new finance bill that has far-reaching regulatory implications for business and the advertising agencies in particular.
“With no pessimism as we step into the New Year, we want to engage this workshop with a sense of optimism and openness and yet be pragmatic about where we are as a professional body and as member agencies,” he said.
The agency boss emphasised on the dire economic situation which he pointed out that many agencies were grappling with, including shrinking margins, rising overheads, punishing payment cycles, erratic cash flow, increasingly promiscuous and unfaithful clients among other challenges.
“I want to draw back on the unfaithful clients because we have some of them represented here, and let me say they are faithful,” he noted.
Also speaking at the event, keynote Speaker, former Managing Director, Diamond Bank Plc and Senior Partner, Anderson Tax Consultants, Emeka Onwuka drew the audience through latest demography on economic developments in Nigeria and expressed hopes that based on current emerging indices, “things were turning positive towards a favourable economy for Nigeria”.
Despite the perceived general economic downturn experienced in 2019, he noted that some sectors of the economy continued to record positive growth, especially with regards to agricultural and most of non-oil sectors of the economy in general.
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