IMC leaders vow to curtail quackery
By Oladapo Olatoyosi
To stem the tide of quackery and unprofessional practices in the Nigerian Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) space, agency and sectoral leaders have vowed to checkmate unbridled meddling of quacks in the noble profession and promised to protect qualified and licensed practitioners in the industry.
Before now, the apex industry regulatory body, Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), and other sectoral groups such as Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN), Experiential Marketers’ Association of Nigeria (EXMAN), Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), among others had put laws and regulations in place to tackle this epidemic. However, their concerted efforts to ward off charlatans appear to be yielding little or no result.
MARKETING EDGE, in a recent interview with the President of Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN), Mr. Emmanuel Ajufo, confirmed that not all of the listed out-of-home agencies were known to the body.
In another interview with the Group Managing Director of CMC Connect, Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, he also admitted that, overtime, PR practice has been threatened by activities of interlopers.
”We have been plagued by the activities of interlopers. Those are people who are not trained to practice the profession but found themselves in the profession in one way or the other, and have become a malignant cancer to the profession,” he lamented.
Mr. Badejo-Okusanya further said that NIPR would curb the menace by reviewing and enforcing regulations.
”The regulations definitely have to be reviewed. They can give a bite to the law because it is almost like it is a toothless bulldog; so anyone can wake up tomorrow and say they are PR practitioners. For us to be serious, we need to enforce regulations. The regulations are weak. The sectoral bodies need to review them and see what can be done to give some teeth to the law that establishes the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations,” he said.
Also addressing the challenges of quackery in a separate interview, the Director General of ARCON, Dr Olalekan Fadolapo, while speaking exclusively with MARKETING EDGE on TV, said that the law only recognizes organizations that are licensed by ARCON. He noted that those organizations are the only ones that are supposed to practice advertising. To achieve this, he maintained that there is a need to review the entire process.
“Now we need to review the entire process. We have the signage agencies that issue out licenses to Out-of-Home organizations. From research done by my people, it was discovered that over 60 percent of most of those organizations have nothing to do with advertising. We are also looking at that sector. I have commenced engagement with all the state signage agencies. Advertising in Nigeria is not a passion; it is a profession. So, because it is a profession, it is guided by rules and regulations,” he stated.
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