LASAA, outdoor advertisers set up committee to resolve issues

The Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency (LASAA) and the Outdoor Advertising Practitioners have set up a 15-member committee to resolve lingering issues in the industry and chat a new way forward, source has said.

Issues to be addressed by the committee include media buyers, agency rate review, vacant board discount policy; 12.5 percent in the harmonized law, health and safety concerns, structural stability.

The decision to set up the 15-member committee was reached at a stakeholders meeting recently between LASAA and registered Outdoor Advertising Practitioners, under the aegies of Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, OAAN.

The meeting, according to the source held at the head office of LASAA in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria had major outdoor advertising practitioners in the state present. The constituted committee had seven members from OAAN and eight members from LASAA.

Addressing the meeting, Managing Director, LASAA, Mobolaji Sanusi said that in the agency’s effort to improve the relationship between it and outdoor advertising practitioners, it visited some organisations with a view to understanding their challenges and the various problems in the outdoor advertising industry.

He said the meeting was the outcome of the various visits, as LASAA had collated some of the concerns of the outdoor advertising practitioners.

“In our efforts to ensure sanity in the industry, it is important to find lasting solutions to some of the issues that have bedeviled the industry,” he said, adding that the meeting should be an opportunity to strengthen “our relations so that in the end, it is going to be a win-win for all of us.”

One of the critical issues discussed at the meeting was media buyers. The outdoor advertising practitioners, the source said decried a situation whereby major brands, such Glo, Nigeria Brewery, among others, frequently owed the practitioners after their advertising campaigns had been displayed.

President, OAAN, Tunde Adedoyin, lamented that the inability of the advertisers to pay members what was due to them had been a major reason they had not been able to pay LASAA what was due to the agency.

Adedoyin appealed to LASAA to intervene in the matter, which had been so frequent, saying that as long as the advertisers, especially major brands, refused to pay the practitioners, it would be difficult for them to meet up with their commitment to LASAA.

Ify Onu Kwuba of the Nigerian Advertising Service Limited also lamented that the advertisers did not always pay the outdoor practitioners as at when due, saying that was the reason many practitioners were owing LASAA.

“It will be good for LASAA to hold meeting with these brands so that they can pay us on time and for us to meet our obligations to LASAA,” she said.

Responding, LASAA MD, Sanusi said if the agency must assist the practitioners on the issue of media buyers, it must do it within the ambit of the law as LASAA only act as regulator of the industry structure.

Daniel Obi