Noah’s Ark MD wants Advertising as separate Programme in varsities

Chief Executive of Noah’s Ark Communications Limited, Mr. Lanre Adisa has called for the teaching of advertising as a programme rather than being an ordinary subject in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

The astute communication expert made this call during a chat with Marketing Edge team as he lamented dearth of talents in the advertising industry.

He said, “There is no commensurate support from the tertiary institution to really train students that will specialise in advertising. There is no university or polytechnic in Nigeria today that has a fantastic advertising programme. They always lump things up with Mass Communication and until we get to that level, the industry will continue to suffer the dearth of talents.”

Adisa stated that the future of advertising in Nigeria is bright and the best way to make the industry explode now is by integrating advertising into university curriculum as a separate discipline. “This will help the industry in terms of quality players and it will make the job of advertising easier. They would have passed through the mills and when you discuss advertising with them at the professional level it will make more sense to them and help their creativity,” he explained.

He noted that most young practitioners at present had personally developed themselves and that the number of talents that abound in the industry now would not be enough to prosecute the large load of advertising in this digital era.

“We are dealing with an era where people go online every second, they get update on their phones on the go. The reality is that the generation we are dealing with is not the generation that will think so much about the traditional media. It just makes sense that we are thinking in that direction. And now that we are moving with the global trends, I think it will be better to also change the tertiary education curriculum to address the current needs of the people,” he posited.

According to Adisa, the country is yet to tap from the immense potential embedded in advertising industry and because about 60 per cent of the population are youths who dialogue with their phones, it is proper for government to leverage on this by expanding the field of advertising to academic environment.

“We are not and I think we are yet to wake up to the immense potential at that channel but I think that we will get there and interestingly what the clients are saying now is that they want particular budget for digital. Before, they didn’t think about it but now they demand for it. Why it is important now is that you can measure it and you can see how many people consume the message in real time,” he stated.

“I think the industry needs all the talents that we can get. However they need to be organised and run like a business because we need competition really and you can’t say that you are a good sportsman without competition really.

So the more people we have out there doing things that are worth talking about, the better for the industry. I made bold to say that I’m a diehard optimist. I enjoy what I do and I have high hopes in the future of what we do in the industry and I think the people that will survive the game are those that are ready to push extra hard and grow talents” he said.