Some companies have adopted a new method of avoiding advertising vetting by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON and evading the payment of the necessary fees.
The companies are smartly embedding product promotions in their Covid-19 corporate social responsibility messages. Ordinarily, APCON does to vet goodwill messages designed to support the government or the society in any course.
Such goodwill messages should primarily talk about the event or the programme and sign off with the sponsor’s company name, but this time, some companies are promoting their products while talking about Covid-19 pandemic.
“They are now going directly to the media houses to place such Ads without coming for vetting in the name of supporting the government campaign messages against Covid-19.”, a source in the advertising regulatory body told BusinessDay.
The source however said that the council has started to sensitise the companies on their actions. “Such ads must be vetted by APCON if they contain product promotions”.
