ARCON: Allowing the industry to breathe
The future of the marketing and advertising industry in Nigeria is bleak. The gloomy outlook is borne out of asphyxiating regulations occasioned by the new Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria’s (ARCON’s) law which, rather than foster a thriving advertising ecosystem in the country, stifles innovation, limits competition, and creates inefficiencies and economic hardship for stakeholders.
While practitioners and stakeholders in the Nigerian advertising and marketing sector lament the strangulating effects of over-regulation in the industry, it would be recalled that, in 2022, ARCON, formerly known as the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), officially assumed a new status. The regulatory council became a more powerful apex body backed by law for Nigeria’s marketing communication industry after the National Assembly empowered it through legislation.
With the new law, ARCON acquired exclusive powers to determine, pronounce upon, administer, monitor and enforce compliance by persons and organisations on matters relating to advertisements, advertising, and marketing communications in Nigeria whether of a general or specific nature.
The new law also recognises the establishment of ARCON’s Governing Council which is saddled with the responsibility to formulate and implement regulations and guidelines on advertisement, advertising and marketing communication, and control creative ratings, industry terms of engagements, credit policy and disengagement protocols.
Sadly enough, six years down the line, ARCON authority is yet to reconstitute its Council which would have guaranteed inclusivity in its activities and pronouncements. The council has only operated like an Octopus in ram-roding its decisions through and through.
However, the powers bestowed on ARCON to monitor and enforce sanctions on any person or organisation that sponsors, exposes or causes to be exposed in Nigeria any advertising, Advertisement and Marketing Communications materials without the prior approval of the advertising Panel, appears to be unilaterally applied with an iron fist in recent times.
Matters have not been helped either by regular summoning of Chief Executive Officers of companies and organisations to appear before ARCON tribunals for mere allegations of suspected advertising infraction or non- compliance. This development has put the Council in more egregious image perception before CEOs of multinationals and major advertisers.
Why summoning Chief Executive Officers of multinationals and corporations while the brand manager or marketing personnel of such organisations could have better been summoned for questioning, even if such needs actually arise?
At different industry fora, the advertising ecosystem has been awash with hues and cries from the advertisers and agency practitioners over ARCON’s draconian and suffocating move to enforce the law guiding the practice of advertising in Nigeria. Although the regulator’s initial AISOP reforms received fair acceptance, there was, however, a dissent from the advertisers over the fact that it was not fully and properly carried along.
The way and manner ARCON now churns out a plethora of rules and codes are not only cumbersome for stakeholders to understand but patently intriguing. The new laws, advertisers have lamented, despite meeting fierce opposition, are fast gagging innovation and stagnating economic progress in the advertising ecosystem, while also castrating the GDP growth in the sector.
No fewer than seven major multinationals have suspended advertising spend since first quarter of the year over the all-ravaging Codes that keep ensnaring most brands’ advertising campaigns, albeit unknowingly.
Other feelers emanating from exalted industry quarters indicate that ARCON may end up killing the industry instead of regulating it. They advocate that self-regulation is the best way to move the advertising ecosystem in Nigeria forward.
As it were, it looks on the surface that ARCON is carrying all stakeholders along with its stakeholders’ engagements. But sources in the industry revealed that this is far from the truth as such engagement fora were being used to dish out more regulations while the “apes will obey”! Some sectoral heads are also grumbling over the ways the Codes and their enforcement are grinding businesses to a halt.
For example, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the UK’s independent advertising regulator. The ASA makes sure adverts across the UK media stick to the advertising rules (the Advertising Codes).
Also, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) is the sister organisation of the ASA and is responsible for writing the Advertising Codes. The ASA and CAP are committed to regulating in a way that is transparent, proportionate, targeted, evidence-based, consistent and accountable.
What’s more, the Advertising Regulatory Board was set up by the broader marketing and communications industry to protect the South African consumer through the self-regulation of advertising, including packaging.
For 50 years, the ARB has been administering the widely-accredited Code of Advertising Practice which regulates the content of South African advertising. The founding members of the ARB are the Marketing Association of South Africa (MASA), the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
As new technologies emerge, so too will new ways to advertise. These new technologies will provide new opportunities for businesses to reach consumers, but they will also present new challenges for regulation which can best be achieved through self-regulation.
It is pertinent to state that the way in which ARCON is going about its newly bestowed powers in the Nigerian advertising industry is rather discouraging than encouraging businesses. For the industry to have a breath of fresh air in a mutual atmosphere of collaboration, sanity and professionalism, self-regulation must be considered a necessity at this precarious economic times.
Efforts to get ARCON Director General to clarify some issues for MARKETING EDGE in its recent directive as regards prohibition of Artificial Intelligence by advertising agencies and brands have proved abortive as the DG always claimed to be away on official duties in Abuja. Our efforts to also get responses via whatsapp or email have also been flagrantly rebuffed. Some sectoral heads approached for comments on industry developments have not helped matters as some of them have been playing the Ostrich.
Two leading advertising practitioners and former Presidents of Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (formerly AAPN) now AAAN, have lamented the looming danger for the sector. They confided in MARKETING EDGE that the rafts of Codes and rules being churned out daily with the threat of tribunals were informed by the undue quest for revenue gains by ARCON in meeting its over-bloated Civil Service structure. The industry elders hinted about plans to intervene by taking up the current situation with the Presidency before the situation gets out of hand.
The elders also regretted the fact that the Council, which was supposed to be fully independent of government funding has now been deeply tied to the apron strings of the federal government as a money spinning institution.
Similarly, some AAAN members who do not want their names mentioned told MARKETING EDGE that a larger conversation on these plethora of Codes and regulations is in the offing.
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