AISOP is meant to regulate, not to strangulate – Dr. Fadolapo
By Abimbola Mohammed
Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo, Registrar, Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), has tasked all sectoral groups in the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) industry on the need to read details of the Advertising Industry Standards of Practice (AISOP) document instead of acting or reacting on hearsay. This, he said, will aid their understanding of the fact that the code of practice is not designed to regulate.
He made this call at the just concluded Industry Dialogue organised by Advertisers’ Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), which had the theme: “The Role of Government Regulations in the Ease of Doing Business in Nigeria”. The event was held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.
Assuring all practitioners that AISOP was introduced to provide a framework that will promote peace and growth of the advertising industry in Nigeria, Ddr. Fadolapo said: “One of the things that I have discovered is that people are not really taking time to read the AISOP document. I plead with everyone to get a copy of the AISOP document instead of reacting on hearsay. APCON is open to discussion, we are ready to sit down and if need be we will have meetings with people, we are not regulating to strangulate, we are not regulating because we need to be a regulator.”
“The need for strategic industry engagement led to the making of AISOP; we didn’t sit in the comfort of our office to make it. Our office is open for dialogue; we will continue to engage and continue to have discussions with all stakeholders. We are trying to promote equity, fairness and justice. We are providing a framework that will guide and drive growth in the advertising industry in Nigeria,” he added.
Responding to a question from Oti Ukubeyinje, President of the Association of Digital Marketing Professionals (ADMARP) and Vice President, Product Marketing and Growth, Terragon Group, on the procedures put in place by APCON to regulate the digital space as regards to advertising practice in Nigeria, Dr. Fadolapo said: “A lot is happening in that space. Recently the House of Representative passed a revolution directing APCON to take over the digital space regulation as it affects advertising. In that space there are different players, there are primary digital space owners and secondary digital space owners and those people are playing majorly in that space. For the primary digital space owners, we have the likes of Facebook, Google etc. and for the secondary owners, we have the bloggers, influencers and the rest.”
Stressing the need to regulate the digital space, he noted that the back-end of all primary and secondary digital space owners must be open to APCON to effectively carry out its duties.
“We need to bring everybody together under one roof to discuss capacity building issues, currency of information and timing. What we have done now is to start engaging them; we cannot work on regulation without them opening their back-end to us. If their back-end is not open to APCON there is no way we can work on it. You cannot monitor Facebook using your phone, so they need to open their back-end and we can’t get them to do that without a court judgment or a law, so many things have to be put in place. We need to work with all relevant sectoral groups and government agencies.
“One of the things we discovered is that most of the primary digital space owners don’t have offices in Nigeria. So, the first thing is, where do we start the engagement? Now that the federal government has directed that they must all have offices in Nigeria, we can hold them responsible,” he concluded.
Recall that APCON had earlier said it is set to clamp down on unlawful digital advertisements and materials without APCON’S licensed approval in order to bring sanity and decorum as well as guiding against the violation of advertising digital code on digital platforms.
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