OAAN delists 70 members due to insolvency
By Felicia Nwosu
The outdoor advertising subsector of the Nigerian marketing communications industry has been forced to delist 70 of its members for inability to meet their financial obligations to the Association in the last five years. This revelation was made by Emmanuel Ajufo, President, Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, (OAAN).
Ajufo who is also the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Opportunity To See Limited however added that some of these delisted members are making effort to come back.
“I also know that in the spirit of corporate license regime, some of our members who have been delisted are making efforts to come back, I hope we should be able to get 120-130 financial members. There are certain obligations or responsibilities that come with being a member of an association. I have received about 15 new members between last year and now, this is because everybody is now aware of the strength of outdoor advertising, even those who were standing alone as corporate members are beginning to join us. They see value in what we are doing.”
The president also told MARKETING EDGE that out of a total of 260 full-fledged members, it is only about 100 that have been able to fulfill their financial obligations to the Association.
He stated that outdoor advertising is growing in leaps and bounds and this has led to a tremendous increase in the subsector’s contribution to national ad spend in recent years.
“The result of OAAN adspend for last year is not yet out, as most of us rely on media facts, but in the previous year, 2020, even with the effect of Covid-19 in place, we did about 15billion and I think that is a good one. I am hopeful that the result of last year will be better than 2020, with the signs we are seeing already.
The outdoor boss lauded the effort of the Registrar of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, Dr. Lekan Fadolapo, for ensuring that the Advertising Industry Standards of Practice (AISOP) came to be a model of professionalism in the industry. He linked the prevailing insolvency among members to some of the issues that AISOP has come to address.
“The issue of debt is also a very serious thing, we realised this a long time ago, and that was why we launched our SOP in February 2020, and now, the industry has taken it over and it is called AISOP. We support it fully, and that is because, everybody that works, should be paid, even the Holy Bible recognises that a labourer deserves his wage. If we are paid as at when due, some of our challenges will be reduced by over 50% and from there, we can also pay the signage agencies, and the issue of going to the site to remove boards will no longer be there, hopefully.
He also applauded Dr. Fadolapo for his contribution towards the emplacement of the Audience Measurement system by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed. He is optimistic that such a model will help boost clients’ confidence in their choice of outdoor channels and their return on investment.
“The minister set up the audience measurement committee essentially for broadcast. After this, we will have to start pushing for the same audience measurement system for OAAN. We are also part of the advertising ecosystem, and we feel that we need our audience measurement system in place. The advertisers don’t want to spend where they are not sure of the ROI, so what is good for the goose, is good for the gander. We have met the Registrar and we have also asked him to speak to the minister on our behalf so that we can also present our case. The Registrar is in support and agrees that there is a need for that and we are keeping our fingers crossed, as a committee will be set up to look into instituting of audience measurement system for OAAN members
The association said it is also making moves in dealing with the influx of quacks into the association.
“We also want to see how we can bring in a whole lot of people who are outside practicing, without being duly registered to practice, so that we can promote professionalism among us, and to differentiate quacks from the real professionals. This is because, whatever happens here, nobody knows the individual practitioner but they know about OAAN, the first thing is to heap the blame on OAAN. We are going to be doing some advocacy programme, using some of our platforms.”
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