With six weeks to go in the 2015 general elections, the outdoor, including posters and press are the major media platforms reaping from the multimillion Naira political campaigns by candidates in various parties.
In the meantime, the major political parties, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and All Progressives Congress, APC are largely deploying their campaign messages through outdoor and press while PDP is going a step further in the skeletal use of TV. Analysts observe that President Goodluck Jonathan has been more prominent on TV and this has been happening almost on daily basis.
Thisday, Vanguard, Punch, BusinessDay and Guardian newspapers, for instance have since December 2014 till January 15, 2015 published about 600 full pages political adverts largely from PDP and APC amounting to about N360 million. Between December 1 and 19, the five newspapers had about 395 political full page adverts mostly coloured pages with Vanguard, ThisDay and Guardian receiving more political adverts.
‘It is the moment for the press and outdoor and the use of these platforms now is because the politicians need to tell a lot of stories. They want people to have recall by seeing the same Ad, the same face and the same messages over and over”, a top media buyer Bayo Adisa of PHD said.
Adisa agreed that the cost of the political adverts so far in outdoor and press platforms runs in to millions of Naira.
He regretted that sizeable number of these Ads is not passing through media buying agencies. This is because according to him, the agents of the political candidates are ignorant of the existence of media buying agencies and the value the agencies could bring to the table.
Media agencies are strategic organizations that give advertisers clear planning and positioning for their brand using competitive information and research analysis.
In his comment, the president of Outdoor Advertising Agencies Association of Nigeria, OAAN, Charles Chijide told BusinessDay that the outdoor industry “is gradually benefiting and would benefit more if only the politicians are playing by the rules”. According to him, some politicians are not patronizing Ad professionals.
He recognized that the use of posters than billboards by politicians is due to lack of knowledge by political agents on proper ways to achieve mileage. Chijide however said that in Lagos there are few vacant billboards because some organizations are proactive to buy spaces in the billboards.
The OAAN president who did not mention his members whose billboards are used by politicians simply said “our cash flow has been improved because of the political adverts though not as expected”
The posters which largely are printed by micro firms are pasted all over Lagos in contravention of LASAA rules.
