The Director-General of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Olalekan Fadolapo has restated the need to protect unsuspecting Nigerians from dubious advertisers, even as he emphsised the need for digital platforms to comply with responsible advertising practice.
Speaking at a recent Advertising Standards Panel (ASP) stakeholders’ forum held in Lagos, Fadolapo faulted impact of unregulated digital advertising, noting innocent and unsuspecting consumers have become victims of fraudsters.
To him, “digital economy is now huge. Every element of physical market is now present in the digital economy. As a regulator, one of the challenges is for us to ensure both traditional and digital economies comply with responsible advertising practice. While in traditional media or markets, it’s about physical address, it’s about location. But when you move into the digital economy, it’s beyond your geographical location. Somebody can sit down in another market and do advertising into your market.”
Director Regulations ARCON, Joe-Eugene Onuorah, spoke on, ‘Regulatory compliance expectation of ARCON from stakeholders.”
Citing Section 34 of the ARCON Act, he said, “any person including sponsor or beneficiary of an advertisement, body corporate, organization or agency which creates or places for publication or exposure of an advertisement in any medium directed at or targeting the Nigerian market without the prior approval of the Advertising Standards Panel commits an offence.”
Speaking further, he disclosed all advertisements and marketing communications content must be submitted for vetting and approval by the ASP.
Onuorah disclosed many firms have already been charged to court for not submitting their adverts to ASP for vetting and approval.
Chairman Heads of Advertising Sectoral Groups, Lanre Adisa, spoke on, “Regulatory compliance: Expectations, of stakeholders from ARCON” He noted, “we have a regime of regulations. If the society is unregulated, people will make bogus claims that can be harmful to the society.”
Adisa, who is also the president of Association of Advertising Agency of Nigeria (AAAN} insisted ARCON needs to keep building on what it is doing now, adding, “but the future is that we should start moving gradually towards self regulation, especially now that we play more in the digital space where the velocity or urgency of work may not necessarily go well with regulation as it is now.”
On his part, Emmanuel Agu who spoke on ethical advertising observed there are lots of fictitious claims that are not good for public consumption. To him, “we are also mindful that what people are advertising is factual and can be proven. So in the course of ethics, you have to be sure the right things are done.”
