The Executive Secretary of the Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG), Francis Dadzie has requested government to expedite the swift passage of the Advertising Council Bill.
According to him, there have been persistent calls soliciting the passage of the bill to regulate standards and practice in the advertising space.
“On the matter of the Advertising Bill, we have been at it since 2010 trying to get regulation into our industry. Because all over the world, every country has an Advertising Council that regulates the standards and practice of advertising, and it looks like our neighbors, Nigeria and Togo all have it but Ghana has been lacking.
“So as an Association we have been trying to promote this bill through the Ministry of Trade. We have been at it for some time but haven’t managed to get it passed. We hope that next year we will be able to achieve the bills’ passage with the Ministry of Trade”.
The bill once approved will establish the Advertising Council of Ghana as the legal government institution mandated to ensure the regulating of advertising, registering practitioners in the industry and licensing advertising companies.
Elsewhere, the president of the International Advertising Association, Joel Nettey in an interview on the sidelines of the Second Africa Leadership Conference, noted that, the absence of the law will make it cumbersome to efficiently control the Advertising industry.
Among other things, he intimated that, the passage of the Bill will give them the legal backing to prosecute advertisers who contravene industry rules.
“As it is right now, we don’t have rules and regulations. You switch on your television and you see an advertiser advertising all sorts of things in real weird times. But it goes beyond us, if there isn’t a body that will guard the advertising space and hold people in check, then really, it is an open playing field, and we can’t afford that”.
In a similar vein, the Advertising Association of Ghana on October 1, 2020, lamenting the precarious position of the sector due to the pandemic, justified the need for the passage of the bill.
The President of the Association, Mensah Togbor, revealed at the association’s 29th Annual General that, agencies have had to streamline their budgets and that affected their cash flows.
“Any industry especially in our industry advertising, when there’s a problem the first thing every company does is to cut marketing budgets. In January people had good budgets then all of a sudden in February, COVID-19 came. I don’t know anyone who didn’t suffer.
“We all suffered. Budgets were cut, some 80 percent, least was 40 percent but most were 80, 60 percent because the companies didn’t even know that they would continue to work. Therefore our industry was at the edge of total collapse”.
He further expressed worry over the paucity of the bill which he indicated will regulate the space.
“Like any other industries, there are rules governing it. There are rules, you cannot just get up because you have been to school and you can read and write. You set up an agency with you and your wife with no qualifications then you start. Because what you do as an agency impacts on the nation, people so you have to do it professionally. So, there are rules guiding it.”
“Again, if you’re an outdoor producing company, you install billboards, there are rules in the industry. For example, now you see a lot of billboards everywhere because the rules are not approved by parliament.
“So, once we have the bill like any other country like Nigeria, South Africa, Europe there are rules but now because there’s no bill, anyone can get up and do whatever they want.”
