Use new technology to advance advertising -- AAG

The Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG) has urged members to leverage new and emerging technologies to enhance various campaigns in order to achieve the desired results.

Joel Nettey, President of the Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG) said: “The multiplicity of media and social media platforms has helped advertising expand to the doorstep of consumers and made work easier for advertisers and the ever-growing advertising agencies”.

He was speaking at a round-table discussion on improving the country’s advertising industry in Accra. The event was organised by the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), in collaboration with the Centre for Sustainability and Enterprise Development (CSED) of the same school.

Mr. Nettey maintained that the proliferation of agencies “has birthed and fuelled fierce competition amongst agencies, compelling innovation in the strategy of advertising campaigns”.

The CEO of Innova DDB Ghana also explained that the existence of multi-national networks as ‘an actor in the sector’ has enhanced the local industry’s capacity and moved it toward exponential growth.

Technology was also identified as an agent of growth -- which has helped reduced laborious processes such as the construction of large buildings -- as well as cutting down on the number of employees recruited in advertising firms.

With access to consumer information that is in some ways easier to collect over the Internet, and more sophisticated technology, companies are customising their ads toward specific audiences.

These technological changes -- which promise to become more advanced as bandwidth increases and provides more richly-textured opportunities for advertisers to tell their stories -- are fundamentally changing the way advertisers relate to their customers.

Customisation, the stakeholders claim, has serious implications for the marketing business and the greater objective of brand development.

Empowered recipients, the consumers, are reportedly responding well to the targetted approach. “People give you a lot of credit for advertising that goes out and finds them in their lives,” he said.

McBen Asamoah of Telemedia identified research as playing a critical role in advertising and urged academia to undertake advertising research -- by taking cues from experts in the field to give room for local references rather than foreign ones.

He also bemoaned the staggering amount it costs advertisers in terms of the loss to clients who are unable to foot bills.

Participants also underscored the need for advertisers to retain their clients amidst competition, against the backdrop of bigger industries facing stiff competition from smaller ones.

According to Prof. Robert Hinson, a lecturer at the UGBS and head of CSED, the gathering will bring to the fore economic and business activities in Ghana at a micro/firm level. The discussions therefore sought to align research with development needs by ascertaining the accuracy and relevance of research on the sector.