13th April, 2018
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
The Lagos State Signage & Advertisement Agency (LASAA) and the Outdoor Advertising Practitioners have moved to reposition the advertising industry and ironed out grey areas.
In line with this, the two parties have set up a 15-member committee to resolve lingering issues in a bid to forge a symbiotic relationship.
The committee is to resolve issues around media buyers, agency rate review, vacant board discount policy; 12.5 percent in the harmonized law, health and safety concerns, structural stability and others.
At a stakeholders meeting held at LASAA office in Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, on Thursday, the parties reached a decision to set up the 15-member committee comprising eight members from LASAA and seven members from the Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, OAAN.
Managing Director, LASAA, Mobolaji Sanusi, who addressed the meeting said the agency visited some practitioners’ organisations with a view to understanding their challenges and the various problems in the outdoor advertising industry.
According to him, 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.”
At the meeting, members of OAAN had decried the issues faced with media buyers who refused to pay practitioners their fees on time.
They lamented situations whereby major brands, such Glo, Nigeria Brewery, and others often owed the practitioners after their advertising campaigns had been exposed.
OAAN President, Tunde Adedoyin, decried the inability of the advertisers to pay members what was due to them had been a major reason why they had not been able to pay LASAA what was due to the agency.
He 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.
According to Ify Onu Kwuba of the Nigerian Advertising Service Limited, 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.
Kayode Situ of the Optimum Exposures collaborated his colleague’s view that major brands, such as Glo and other’s delay in paying for their exposures had been a clog in the wheel of progress in the industry.
“LASAA can put a stop to this. LASAA should sanction the media buyers for refusing to pay on time,” he said, saying that the agency could stop the practitioners from exposing the adverts of these brands to serve as deterrent to others.
LASAA MD, Sanusi, in his response, 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.
“If we are going to come in, there must be a Memorandum of Understanding. If you want the regulators to come in, that is a private arrangement. We can make this industry a working one, we are ready to partner with you,” he said.
He also wanted OAAN to sanction its members who were both practitioners and media buyers at the same time, adding that OAAN should be more open with the agency if it must assist.