OYSAA links aesthetic billboard environment to investment attraction

Yinka Adepoju, director-general, Oyo State Signage and Advertising Agency (OYSAA), has challenged all stakeholders, especially the government to ensure environmental friendly outdoor advertising as such situation encourages investors.

Addressing participants at a seminar organised by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), in Kano recently, Adepoju said “the condition of any state environment depicts how the state and people are.

“Chaotic situations in outdoor advertisement not only cast aspersion on the medium of communication, its practitioners, but also the users (advertisers), government and the general public.”

Speaking on ‘Use of Out-of-Home Platforms in Public/Corporate Communications: Challenges of Effectiveness and Environmental Protection,’ Adepoju also said “poor state of the environment affects quality of life and remains a yardstick for the civility of the society, hence we must combat disorder and chaos of unplanned and haphazardly erected outdoor advertising structures.

“We should be reminded that it is only when the outdoor space is safe, sane and conducive for business that both government and stakeholders would continue to thrive.”

He regretted the poor use of out-of-home platforms in public and corporate communications in some major cities. According to him, some outdoor advertising structure of various types, shapes and sizes are haphazardly erected and many of them are in deplorable conditions.

Some of the challenges confronting practitioners include the inability to adapt or adopt necessary and useful changes, he said, saying “what we see on some of our major city roads are conventional boards. We should by now have adorned our streets like other developed parts of the world with cutting-edge technology-driven media solutions commensurate with international standards and best practices via the introduction of LED electronic display technology, not minding our limitations, which arise from epileptic power supply.”