The Many Challenges of APCON

Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria is faced with several obstacles in its bid to regulate and control advertising practice

By RAYMOND MORDI

APCON members

Olugbenga Ajayi is no longer enthusiastic about being a member of the Advertising Practitioners’ Council of Nigeria, APCON. Waving the letter he had just received from the body, he said that was the third reminder he would be receiving notifying him that he was going to be de-listed from the APCON register of advertising practitioners, for consistently failing to pay his dues. Ajayi, who has just returned from the funeral of an older sibling, was in no mood to entertain any requests for money. He works in one of those media houses where salaries are irregular, and thus has been struggling financially for a couple of years. He told the magazine that the current letter from APCON was the last straw that broke his relationship with the body. “After all, what is the big deal about being a member of APCON? If they want to remove my name from their list, they can go ahead. I am a member because I read Mass Communication and had once worked in an advertising agency,” he added.
Ajayi’s predicament is by no means an isolated one. Like the embattled journalist, similar letters from APCON, threatening to remove his name from their register no longer bothers a senior academic staff of Adebola Adegunwa School of Communications, Lagos State University, LASU, who does not want to be named. “It was only at the initial stage that I was disturbed by the threat to strike my name off the register. But after considering the whole thing, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m better off not complying with the APCON directive to pay up, as I have practically nothing to lose by not being a member,” the lecturer confided in the magazine.  
Olalekan Akashoro, head, Public Relations and Advertising Department, LASU School of Communications, disagrees. He told the magazine that APCON membership confers some degree of respectability on individual members. His words: “Just like membership of other professional bodies, APCON membership confers professional competence on members and that is why APCON would demand that annually you renew that competence, by paying your dues.” But he said some members do not see it that way. “While they would want to continue enjoying that status that APCON confers on them, they are usually reluctant to renew their membership,” Akashoro said. Unfortunately for them, he said, statutorily, APCON has the power to de-list and prosecute, because it is criminal to continue to parade oneself as a member after being de-listed. “That is impersonation, even if you have the academic qualification,” he added. Akashoro is of the view, however, that APCON does not have the wherewithal to pursue the prosecution of defaulting and de-listed members.
The issue of non-payment of dues by members has been a major challenge inhibiting the body from effectively performing its statutory function of regulating and controlling advertising practice in the country. Though Nigeria’s advertising business has witnessed tremendous growth in recent times, especially from the viewpoint of agency billings and proliferation of advertising agencies and media houses, but the regulatory body is still burdened by the issue of poor funding. The implementation of the agency’s programmes is being bogged down by the huge debts accruing from unpaid practice fees, which has been a thorny issue for some time between the body and the defaulting practitioners. APCON has indicated a number of times that it would soon embark on the de-listing and possible prosecution of about 3,000 of its registered practitioners, who are said to owe licence fees worth several billions of naira. This amounts to about half of the 6,000 registered advertising practitioners in the country. The council indicated, in a recent notice, that it would soon embark on a strict enforcement of provisions of Act 55 of 1988 which established it, especially with regards to renewal of practicing licence by practitioners. Chris Doghudje, chairman, APCON, said the council had commenced the compilation of a list of defaulters, following the expiration of the deadline for possible de-listing from the membership register.

Doghodge: determined to vet adverts

Aside from the issue of finance, APCON has many challenges facing it, which include the invasion of the advertising scene by quacks. It has been on an intensive campaign for sometime now to make the advertising profession as respectable as medicine, law, engineering and accountancy. In this regard, it has also been having a running battle with illegal practitioners, who practice without registering with the council. The body, which is statutorily mandated by government to regulate advertising practice in the country, has for the umpteenth time called on all those seeking registration as advertising practitioners to possess the prescribed academic qualification or sit for its diploma in advertising examination. “Like in other professions, we have our share of quacks parading themselves as advertising practitioners. But the sheer number, in the case of advertising, may be higher because it is a new profession and some people are finding it difficult to accept it as such,” Doghudje said, adding that APCON would soon embark on inspection visits to advertising agencies and advert departments of media houses among others to fish out non-registered practitioners that are practising advertising illegally. He added that the council is determined to upgrade the certificate and diploma examinations to make the certificates awarded by APCON as respectable as those of their British counterparts. In this wise, he said the council was considering making the entry qualification for the APCON diploma a university degree or its equivalent.
The issue of advertising practitioners practising illegally goes beyond persons without the required academic qualification and experience. From the outset of the registration exercise in 1992, APCON, in a scheme described as a “window of opportunity”, threw its doors open to anyone with a minimum of between five and 10 years experience in advertising to get registered. But available statistics show that unregistered practitioners in advertising by far outnumber the law-abiding ones. Equally worrisome is the fact that of the registered practitioners in the country only about 50 per cent are financial members. Technically, therefore the remaining 50 per cent are practising illegally.
Besides, with the growth witnessed in the industry in recent years, observers say there is a dearth of the calibre of personnel, such as copy writers, needed to drive the industry. Under a current assessment by the sector operators, the worth of Nigeria's advertising industry has been put at over N500 billion. The growth in the industry in recent years has been attributed to the recapitalisation exercise by banks, a directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and liberalisation of the telecommunications industry which broke NITEL’s monopoly, thereby attracting private investments in the industry. The two key economic developments engendered tremendous marketing communication activities with agencies raking in millions of naira worth of advert billings. Today, the Nigerian advertising industry is making efforts to ensure that it measures up to global industry practice. Major players in the industry have used affiliations with foreign advertising agencies to avail themselves of technical know-how in the areas of creativity and training, but observers insist there is a manpower challenge facing the industry.
Against this background, Akashoro observed that creativity has been on the decline within the industry, and that plagiarism is on the increase, with copy writers now tending towards the obscure. He said the Advertising Standards Panel, ASP, an organ of APCON charged with vetting and approval of advertisements, is more concerned about copy writers’ compliance with advertising code of conduct, particularly what they have to say about their client’s offerings and the moral value that the society demands. The university don believes that most agencies do not have a focus on what they want to say about their client’s offerings. “Thus, while trying to create adverts, they say so little about such offerings, and often come into conflict with societal values,” he told the magazine. Agencies, according to him, are supposed to do their jobs in a way that would not undermine societal values, while still adhering to their professional code of practice. He said most of the adverts that appear to have a lot of creative input are mere imitations or replications of foreign adverts.
Indeed, with effect from October 1, 2007, APCON issued a statement directing that all advertisements would be subjected to pre-exposure vetting. “Now, we vet all ads, not only mandatory ads,” Doghudje admitted. This implies a declaration of a state of emergency, as far as advertising regulation is concerned. Hitherto, only products in the mandatory or controlled category required pre-exposure vetting, while those listed in the general goods/services category may not be presented for vetting, but care must be exercised to make their advertisements conform to the provisions of the Code of Advertising Practice and the laws. Products in the controlled category include: foods/consumables; personal hygiene products; medicines; advertising directed at children; tobacco products; and alcoholic beverages. Others are home video promos, adverts involving financial institutions, religious revivals/convention, political advertising, trado-medical products and services and telecommunications. Those in the general goods and services category, which did not require pre-exposure vetting, but are expected to conform to the code of advertising practice, are: corporate ads of a general nature; medical equipment, automobiles, electronics and electrical equipment, notices, financial statements, congratulatory messages, obituaries and the like.
Under the present arrangement, the ASP is empowered to vet and approve creative inputs from advertising agencies, based on their compliance with the code. But Akashoro said the rampant flouting of the APCON advertising code by practitioners has assumed a wider dimension, hence the decision to vet all adverts, rather than only those in the mandatory category. He said there was an ongoing debate among members whether it was more desirable to continue to depend on the present government-backed regulation, or tilt towards self-regulation. Self-regulation implies that practitioners should know the code and regulate themselves without being coerced. “Some practitioners believe that self-regulation is better than government-backed regulation, while others do not,” he said.
The other challenge is the unnecessary government interference in the running of APCON, through the appointment of key officials to its board. Thus, by implication, APCON is not totally independent. Some practitioners are advocating that, owing to the crucial role APCON is playing in the Nigerian economy, it should not be run like a government ministry. Those charged with the responsibility of running the body, they contend, must be handsomely remunerated and exposed to regular foreign seminars, symposia, conferences, exhibitions, and so on. Besides, they argue that their employment should be based on renewable contracts; meaning that it should not be a pensionable job and employees ought to be regularly given targets to encourage them to be self-driven.
Against this background, observers say APCON is not totally in control as far as regulation is concerned. Lolu Akinwumi, president, Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, AAAN, and chief executive officer, Prima Garnet Ogilvy, is of the view that advertising is also over-regulated in the Nigerian environment, with the creation of multiple checkpoints for vetting of ads, particularly in food and drugs, as well financial services. “Do we have need for the multiplicity of regulatory bodies? Why must a simple full-page ad go to the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, NAFDAC, and APCON for vetting, with its financial implications? I know the director-general of NAFDAC as a guest of AAAN made some very brave defence of its role, but why won’t NAFDAC fulfil this role within APCON as stated in its decree?” Akinwumi asked. Thus there is the seamy relationship among sectoral groups in the industry. Indications are that there is no harmony among such stakeholders.
Fatai Odesile, first vice-president, Advertisers’ Association of Nigeria, ADVAN, said advertisers are eager to see the realisation of stakeholders’ efforts to resuscitate the Audit Bureau of Circulation, ABC, which went into limbo decades ago. Industry stakeholders under the aegis of APCON are said to have finalised the basic framework for the eventual take-off of the ABC. According to Odesile, the bureau’s bye-laws, Articles of Association, and memorandum of understanding, MoU, have been signed by all stakeholders, and the contract for designing the bureau’s website has been given out. The fact that there is no credible ABC in place meant that media planners are constrained in doing their job. Besides, advertisers are not happy with advertising agencies for a couple of other reasons, including poor quality production of adverts and lack of creativity, in spite of the increasing cost of advertising.
However, APCON has started taking positive steps to redeem the image of the profession, such as the move to end the issue of media debt and resuscitating the ABC. The theme of its last stakeholders’ forum, which took place March 27, 2008, at the Lagos Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja, Lagos, says it all: “Who is Killing Advertising”. Already, the council has started reaping the fruits of its renewal spirit, with the recent restoration of its subvention by the federal government. The government’s move has been interpreted as recognition of the vital role advertising is expected to play in turning the Nigerian economy around for the better. But how far APCON would go in re-inventing itself remains to be seen.