Election season as windfall for OOH practitioners
By Felicia Nwosu
Across the globe and over the years, political season has always been seen as a period of windfall for practitioners in the out-of-home advertising ecosystem. This is because billboards have proven to be one of the most effective and trendy platforms for strategic propagation of political messages and images to promote candidates during elections. Political OOH adspend usually makes a substantial part of anybody seriously seeking to hold political office.
For the electorates, political season is always a season to behold the beauty of colourful, eye-catching and most engaging and memorable billboards across various locations, announcing political candidates as they strategise to outdo one another with various political tactics, which help voters make wise decisions.
However, currently across Nigeria, lively, creative and memorable campaigns are nowhere to be found as the usual sing-along political campaigns that used to fill the electoral atmosphere seem to have gone with the wind. The last best that still re-echoes, according to some electorates, is that of the former governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode.
The 2023 electoral season appears to be a totally different ball game for those seeking public offices and advertising/marketing professionals who enhance their image while selling their manifestoes to the electorates. We see politicians complain of non-persuading marketing campaigns from agencies while the agencies themselves cry over very low budgets. In this field of play, observers can hardly tell who the victim is. The question is: are political candidates reducing advertising budget as a result of low quality marketing campaigns or are advertising practitioners offering low quality campaigns to meet up with low budgets? Or is it a case of the birds learning to fly without perching as hunters learn to shoot without missing? Who is to be blamed?
A follow-up on past elections have shown that billboard campaigns accounted for a huge chunk of the total campaign advertising budgets especially during 2015 election where the sum of N5 billion was reported to have been expended on billboard campaigns in Lagos alone.
George Noah, a former Managing Director of the Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASAA), then, revealed in 2015 that about N2.5 billion was spent on wall drapes and billboards, including 300 static and 40 electronic boards. An estimated 40,000 street lamp pole banners were deployed and gulped N1 billion; while 5,000 A-frame boards cost N350 million. About 5,000 stick-in-ground frames were deployed at the cost of N50 million.
The year 2019 also experienced a boom in the out-of-home segment and this was evident at the rate with which the political candidates occupied a large number of billboards across the nation.
For the year 2023, a look at the various parts of Lagos State has shown that practitioners in the out-of-home sector are not sharing from the commonwealth of the political marketing era. The atmosphere of the forthcoming election seems to lack a lot of sparkle and the usual hustle and bustle associated with electoral campaigns seem to be missing as well. Some politicians have decided to cut costs by employing every Dick, Tom and Harry as campaign managers who deem it right to sever the relationship with the professional handlers.
This has been attributed to various factors such as the harshness of the economic crunch affecting the country, the personalities of the contenders which have given rise to sensitive reactions amongst the electorates, insecurity, and of course, the low patronage of outdoor professionals who have been replaced by all manner of quacks, who equally bring the same amount of return on investment to the politicians even at cheaper rates.
Across Lagos State for instance, the most prominent posters are those that belong to Governor Sanwo-Olu’s team and that of the Jagaban himself, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Although one could behold a few billboards across major crossroads and highways, feelers from the industry watchers and stakeholders suggest that the OOH environment is dull. The loss that this gloomy business atmosphere portends for billboard owners is yet to be counted.
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