Draw the line between practice and business of advertising— Dr. Fadolapo
By Zion Rufus
Registrar, Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), Dr. Lekan Fadolapo has identified the biggest challenge facing Nigeria’s marketing and advertising industry to be the failure to draw the line between the practice of advertising, and the business of advertising.
According to the industry leader, APCON had previously paid more attention to the practice of advertising, whereas the business of advertising had for the longest years been on auto-run.
“I looked at these issues basically from those two standpoints and I concluded that we need to do things that will strengthen the practice of the industry from those two areas,” Dr. Fadolapo submitted in an interview with MARKETING EDGE.
He continued: “If we don’t look at the business of advertising and concentrate only on the practice of advertising, there is going to be a major challenge. This challenge has created a lot of gaps and big issues for practitioners and operators within the industry. So, coming to this seat, I felt like since most efforts have been concentrated on the practice of advertising, we just have to look at what we have on ground, and how we can up that. Then, in the business of advertising, we will need to start afresh. This was what led to some of the new initiatives that we are currently pushing.”
Sitting at the heart of this “new initiatives” is the Advertising Industry Standard of Practice (AISOP), introduced by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) in October 2020 as the new guideline for all advertising practices in Nigeria. In his submission, the registrar disclosed that the turning point for the council was AISOP.
“The turning point for us is the Advertising Industry Standards of Practice (AISOP). Basically, when I assumed duty, one of the few things I did was to speak to all the sectoral groups, asking them, ‘what do you guys want us to do, and how do you think we can up the trade and provide the healthy environment just like every other regulator?”, and the common denominator is: Help us look at the terms of trade, engagement, the business leg of this whole conversation so that we can have a better industry!,” Fadolapo urged.
AISOP was specifically set up to effectively tackle the numerous challenges facing Nigeria’s advertising industry, review the advertising code, and to provide the regulatory framework in all critical areas of concern such as Engagement policy, Payment terms and conditions, numeration model, media rates and commissions, disengagement protocols, credit policy, return of advertisement and measurement, and peaceful resolution.
“This reform is in phases, but the general focus is how we develop our industry,” Fadolapo revealed.
“For the leg that has to do with the practice of advertising, that is, the review of the advertising code, we set up a committee which was asked to look at the code. We wrote to all the sectoral groups to send up representatives which they did, to look at the current code. We also set up a committee to look at the business because the business has always been on auto-run.”
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Comment
No comments found.