Rescue the Ghanaian Advertising industry: lessons from Nigeria

APCON Goes after Illegal Advertising Practitioners

The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) last year 2014 expressed disappointment in the advertising agencies that engaged the services of unqualified persons.

A statement by the advertising regulatory body, signed by the head, Planning, Research, Corporate Affairs and Strategy, Ralph Anyasor, noted that “after several sensitisation visits to the advertising establishments and warning notices to illegal persons in the advertising practice, the body has commenced the arrest and prosecution of offenders”.

It said the crackdown on illegal practice, which resumed recently, took the enforcement team of APCON to advertising agencies and media organizations identified as employing unlicensed persons.

Some of the illegal advertising persons arrested and quizzed by the police include Mr Manomah Chandroth, Product Manager, Samsung; Mr Kayode Adunmadeyin, Marketing Manager, Radio Lagos; Omololo Omigbulke, Commercial Manager, Top Radio; and Yemi Egbebiyi, Head of Client Service, Blue Seal Communications.

Others were Fifemayo, Aiyesimaju, Strategy and Business Executive of DDB Lagos; Akinola Salu, Marketing Manager of Multi-Choice Nigeria, Head, DSTV Media Sales.

The dying Ghanaian Industry

The above article, culled from the Vol. 8 No.4 edition of the Billboard magazine, draws attention to the charlatans in the advertising industry in Ghana and the effort, led by the Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG), to regulate the industry.

I know that the AAG has proposed an advertising bill and it is my prayer that the draft bill will be passed into law sooner than later. My last checks indicate that it is with the Minister of Trade and Industry, Hon. Spio Gabrah. I trust the commitment that he made at the last Graphic Business/Fidelity Bank Breakfast Meeting that he would ensure the passage of the bill.

It is very important that we regulate the advertising industry in Ghana. The reason why the Nigerian industry is growing while the Ghanaian one is tottering can be traced to the regulatory work of the APCON and the lack of its equivalent in Ghana.

I can’t wait for the setting up of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Ghana (APCOG) – or whatever the draft bill calls our regulatory body. I am wondering how many people would be arrested if this body was in place and the same scale applied by APCON were applied to the advertising industry in Ghana.

 The ills of the industry

Currently, the advertising industry in Ghana is characterized by a number of ills. First, there are people masquerading as advertising agencies with “agencies” that are run only from their Tablet PCs an upgrade of the operation of their business from the boots of their cars.

Also, there are those who believe that once they work in a media house, they understand advertising and can provide professional service. Most of these people proceed to produce creatives and also produce and manage media schedules mostly characterized by poor execution and thus, poor return on adverting investment..

Another ill phenomenon is that after a year or two’s stint in an advertising company, a lot of young people are quick to leave their employers and set themselves up. They do not take time to learn the trade, so they do not gain much experience. They lack capital too, so they team up with kickback-seeking workers of their clients to sustain the agency. With such small agencies and little or no capital, the quality of outputs suffers and advertising agencies lose out on the big accounts, especially of multinational firms, for lack of size, scale and creative capacity.

In addition, the problem of hundred percent foreign ownership of firms in the advertising industry is worrying. This is a practice that will not happen in most markets. We should welcome our foreign counterparts but they SHOULD come work with us and complement us. We need to build the capacity of our indigenous players, so that we can also begin to export advertising expertise to other countries for the needed foreign exchange. We cannot continue to be a net importer of advertising services when we had a first mover advantage, at least within the West African sub region.

Bad practices by players

Apart from the above problems, the country’s unregulated advertising industry suffers a practice where media houses go directly to advertising clients, sidelining the agencies. This is the result of the unprofessionalism that has bedevilled the industry in the recent times, where agencies are paid but they do not pay the media houses, so that the age of media debt is in excess of 200 days — a practice that is unacceptable in any industry.

But it is not advertising agencies alone that flout business integrity. Clients also do: it is the case that some of them do not pay the agencies their charge and run off to other agencies or even to place their ads directly in the media, thus leaving the debts on the agencies. I continue to call on my colleagues in the industry for a tripartite meeting between media owners, advertising agencies and clients so that we can work on harmonizing our relationship, which will inure to the benefit of the industry and Ghana as a whole.

 Three other ills

This mutual cheating and the aforementioned problems apart, at least, three more ills can be pointed out. First is the situation where you have clients playing the entire value chain roles of client, agencies and now media house. This does not augur well for the industry. I hope that the bill will come quickly and resolve all of these issues.

Second is the poor quality of the creative that we see in the media. Closely associated with this are the criminal and dangerous assertions by advertisers, especially of medicines and drugs. Such unverified claims are costing the country many lives.

Lets all work to save the advertising industry

I plead with Hon Spio Gabrah to work quickly on the bill and pass it through the process to have the President give it his assent into law. It will inure to the benefit of Ghana as a whole.

I will like to remind all in the advertising industry that it is in our interest to keep the sanctity of our trinity –Media Owners, Advertising Agencies and Clients. It is in our long-term interest to let this work and work well.

Let’s get the Ghana advertising industry to work again, it can and will work again. We all have to play our parts. The AAG, media owners, advertising agencies and clients owe it to Ghana to make the advertising industry work again.

It is about time that we rescued this previously vibrant industry, which produced some great stuff and employed a lot of people.

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