AAAN Picks Rector for Advertising Academy

After several years of dilly dallying, the coast now looks clear for the much anticipated take-off of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria’s (AAAN), Advertising Academy, as some of the preliminary approval needed for its commencement has already been secured.

MARKETING EDGE exclusively gathered that a Rector has been appointed by AAAN for the academy and he is veteran adman Joachim Atunwa. The association settled for Atunwa after weeks of painstaking screening and deliberations and he is expected to resume duty later this month ahead of the take-off of the institution, which will be located in Ikeja, GRA, where a property has already been secured for it.

MARKETING EDGE learnt that Atunwa got the job because of his balanced view of the IMC sector having worked both on the agency and clients’ sides. The experienced adman was a former staff of Biodun Shobanjo’s Insight Advertising, where he made his mark in the advertising profession. Later on he switched to the clients’ side, when he joined Glo and rose to become Director, Marketing Communications (Advertising). There, he was directly in charge of the Telecoms Company’s marketing and advertising efforts.

The Academy which is planned to be of international standard, will be Nigeria’s version of America’s Academy of Advertising, and it is expected to be fosters research that is relevant to the field and provides a forum for the exchange of ideas among advertising professionals and other stakeholders.

A press statement announcing the appointment of Atunwa and the exact date of the college’s take-off will be issued by the association in a about a fortnight, MARKETING EDGE has learnt. However, the President of AAAN Kelechi Nwosu declared recently during an interaction with the press that the commencement of the Academy is tentatively scheduled for March 2016.

The decision to go ahead with the college and commence full academic activities comes despite AAAN’s inability to get full accreditation from the appropriate regulatory authorities and also sort out all necessary legal approvals. Meanwhile, the approval of the Ministry of Education and APCON has already been fully secured.

Nwosu also noted that the academy has the backing of most of the veteran admen in the industry and that the association was still in the process of getting as much start-up funds as possible.

The association was forced to back down on its earlier plan to make the academy a degree awarding institution after it became clear that they could not meet the accreditation requirements of the Nigeria Universities Commission (NUC).

According our impeccable source, because of the brickwall with NUC, the association is now seriously considering making the institution a Diploma awarding Monotechnic like the Nigeria Institute of Journalism (NIJ). Another option on the table of AAAN is local or international affiliation either with a University or Advertising College.

While these issues are being sorted out, the association has decided to go ahead with the commencement of the school to forestall another long lay-off and register it as one of the legacies left behind by the Kelechi Nwosu led executive whose tenure expires in a couple of months from now.