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Advertising standards enforcement gets teeth
(The Sun) |
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ENYERIBE EJIOGU
A new dawn when advertisers of products and services can no longer get away with false claims has broken as all advertising messages would henceforth meet the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) guidelines on standards.
These facts were disclosed recently when the chairman of Advertising Standards Panel (ASP) of APCON and Senior Vice President of Neimeth International Pharmaceuticals Plc, Mr Emma Ekunno, led some members of the Panel on a courtesy visit to The Sun Newspapers corporate headquaters in Lagos..
With the exploding array of products and services being marketed to Nigerian consumers, Ekunno said that it was very necessary at this point in time to strengthen the enforcement of the existing provisions in the law that established APCON so as to protect the public from being deceived and defrauded through false and unscrupulous claims made in advertisements.
To achieve this, Ekunno disclosed that the panel was recently re-engineered and re-charged to "make it more responsive". In line with this, the body now has 22 members representing key agencies of the Federal Government (CBN, NAFDAC Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, Copyright Protection Commission) and corporate bodies connected with advertising, such as Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria, Association of Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria, Outdoor Advertising Association, among others.
More importantly, Ekunno noted that the new ASP has substantially reduced the bureaucracy and redtape which once attended the operations of the panel in the past by "cutting the turnaround time to just 48 hours maximum," through the adoption of a fast-track approach and emergency vetting procedures while still retaining the administrative vetting process.
On the success recorded by the panel to date, Ekunno drew attention to the stoppage of the MTN T.V commercial styled "Mama Na Boy", which he said contravened "a provision in the APCON Law forbidding the promotion of any gender as being superior." He also particularly mentioned advertisements for herbal preparations which exploit human misery to make questionable and unsubstantiated claims.
Concerning the thorny issue of the huge debts owed to media owners by major advertisers and advertising agencies, he pleaded for understanding, stating that the panel was committed to an amicable and early resolution of the matter.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Sun, Mr Mike Awoyinfa, expressed his appreciation to Ekunno and his team for their doggedness in carrying out the Ombudsman role of the panel.
He pledged the readiness of the paper to support the panel in its efforts to sanitize advertising practice in the country. |
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