Advertisers tasked to address industry challenges, discover new business opportunities
Over the years, Nigeria’s advertising practitioners have made significant impact on growing the economy but to scale up this contribution, they have been challenged to frontally tackle issues facing the practice and also discover new grounds for business towards economic growth.
In spite of the industry’s substantial role in the economy, the advertising community is suffering from government considerable non-recognition and patronage, client debt, dearth of talent and unhealthy competition among others.
Leading discussion on ‘Growing the Economic Pot: The Role of Advertising’ at Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN, meeting last weekend in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Chairman of Channels Television, John Momoh believes that practitioners must brace up and be ready to frontally confront the challenges facing advertising practice in the 21st century.
Momoh, who was represented by another veteran in the nation’s media industry, Kingsley Uranta, also encouraged advertising practitioners to leverage the opportunity technology has provided to further enhance their businesses so that they can sustain and boost their contribution to the growth of economic pot.
According to him, advertising may not be experiencing the best of times, but said there are still opportunities that could be explored to actually halt the declining fortunes of the multi-billion naira industry.
Similarly, the Publisher of Business A.M, Phillip Isakpa argued for a paradigm shift in the practice. He encouraged them to discover and explore new grounds for opportunities instead of waiting, endlessly, to be contacted for pitches by clients and government.
He directed their attention to SMEs and agriculture, regarded as the backbone of any economy, stating that advertising practitioners had not done enough towards encouraging SMEs to really harness their potentials.
“We all know that the SMEs are the backbones of any economy, and if the dream of growing the economic pot is to be realized, SMEs should be given maximum opportunities to harness their potential”.
On Agriculture, he said that despite the steady growth the nation’s agricultural sector seems to be recording in the past few years, advertising practitioners had not done enough in that sector to grow the economic pot.
Isakpa also regretted that the advertising practitioners failed to leverage the opportunity in economic rebasing of 2014 which saw Nigeria’s GDP hit $510 from $270 and became the largest economy in Africa. He said they could have leveraged the opportunity to attract more investments in Nigeria.
In his contribution, Lanre Adisa, Chairman of the Noah’s Ark Communications Group called for a self-appraisal among practitioners in the industry. “We need to re-appraise our roles as practitioners. We need to look out for opportunities in the industry that we can leverage,” he stated.
Kelechi Nwosu, former president of AAAN and CEO of TBWA said that advertising practitioners need to be more entrepreneurial to significantly impact the economic pot.
Earlier, the immediate past president of AAAN, Kayode Oluwasona described the theme of the lecture as part of the association’s efforts towards enhancing the fortunes of the country, by ensuring practitioners play a major role in growing the economy.
At the meeting, AAAN elected Ikechi Odigbo, the CEO of DDB as president while Steve Babaeko, and the CEO of X3 M Ideas emerged as the Vice President.