Admen lament weak performance in Q1 of 2019
Advertising practitioners have lamented over the poor performance in the industry in the first quarter of 2019.
They argued that the industry recorded low spend because clients and business owners were skeptical about investing during the electioneering periods for fear of being overwhelmed by the political activity.
Mr. Feyi Olubodun, the former Managing Director, Insight Publicis, confirmed that the advertising industry recorded little growth in the first quarter of 2019.
According to him, the electioneering periods shrouded a lot of advertising activities in the industry but added that things were beginning to pick up now that the elections are over.
In Olubodun’s words:“ It is difficult to access the industry as you know it is an election year. Some ad agencies are usually cut up with the elections. I think the industry is the same as it was last year.”
“It is trying to come out of the recession of the past couple of years. It is moving gradually and all of that; however, the elections in this first quarter have shrouded a lot of advertising activities but now we will begin to see what the real play is like now that the elections are over.
Speaking in the same vein, the Managing Director, Etu Odi Communications, Mr. Uzoma Okoye, said that the advertising industry witnessed a slow start in the first quarter of the year because of the elections.
Okoye pointed out that advertising activities in the industry were beginning to pick up at the moment as there seems to be a lot of marketing activities as people are now planning for the rest of the year.
He said: “We knew that it was going to be a slow start of the year because of the elections. A lot of people have been waiting to see what happens but things seems to be picking up in the last couple of weeks, there seems to be lot of marketing activities, people are now planning for the rest of the year, so it looks positive”
Earlier, the former President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), Mr. Kayode Oluwasona, had predicted that there would be minimal growth in the advertising industry in 2019.
Oluwasona noted that the industry may still suffer from the sluggishness of the outgone year, stressing that nothing has changed on the macroeconomic level to inspire any optimism for the advertising industry in Nigeria.
“I personally do not see any serious growth happening, that is on the macro level for the total agency, because if for anything there is nothing new that is happening now, if for example there was a new industry that is opening up like it happened in the case of the banks and telecommunications, we would have expected more” he said.
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