By Afolabi Idowu
The newly-elected president of Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria AAAN, Lanre Adisa, in his maiden chat with journalists recently, said the newly elected executives of the association are ready to address salient issues affecting Nigeria’s creative advertising industry, and to make a difference.
On his administration’s plan in terms of resuscitating dead agencies, he recalled that “One of the things we did in the last administration is the setting up of the welfare committee, just to check on one another. Now can we extend that welfare also to businesses? In other words, how can we support you as a business? How can the secretariat be of help? Can it become a form of consultancy that can help businesses in some areas? So those are some of the areas we’ll be talking about.”
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While making reference to efforts made by the last administration, Adisa said, “There was some form of partnership with a foreign business school for some time. It’s good but it needs to be homegrown. Let’s build it from here first, and now seek partnership to grind it more. Such foreign partnership is not even sustainable if you look at the exchange rate when you do business with any outfit outside Nigeria. If they say it’s $500, when you look at it, how many agencies can you send from your end? So there must be a way out. The talent is here. Our people are the ones going to Pan African University (PAU) to teach Advertising, when we can actually find a way of using them within our own environment. I’ll say watch that space in terms of changing the dynamics. I believe it’s a path to the future, in terms of training and retraining.
“The other thing that can help us is encouraging guilds to happen. Guild of Writers, Guild of Directors and others, and have them work within themselves, set their own standards and fix all of that into the LAIF Award, and you will be surprised at the results you are going to get.”