From Uche Usim, Abuja
President, National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN), Dr Idorenyen Enang has advised that Nigerian Presidents and Governors should employ professional marketers who are strategic brand communicators and specialists, as Spokespersons.
He gave the advice in Abuja on Thursday at the 2023 NIMN annual conference themed: “The Role of Marketing and Ethics in Nation Building”.
He said: “The time has come when the President and the Governors would not be carrying journalists as Spokesmen. People are brands and you need people who would not just sell the country or sell the brand but understand the ethos of it. Not that journalists will not do a good job but the time is now to bring in more thinking and more veracity to what we’re doing and push it out using the vehicle of the media. You need professionals to craft out a strategy to be able to work in the entire system and implement it. It’s a total picture.
He added that professional marketers were ready, willing and able to partner with the government at all levels to drive growth by designing and properly communicating programmes and reforms in the polity.
“We’re starting a series on NTA, NIMN half-hour for the first 13 weeks and we’re targeting SMEs. They drive the GDP. Our own SMEs may not be near there but we have it. We want to as marketers help provide some insight in governance and thinking”, he said.
Also speaking, the Director General Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria, ARCON, Dr Lekan Fadolapo, said that to strengthen the Nigeria’s marketing economy, an enforceable standard of practice needs be established to provide acceptable industry-wide rule of engagement which will cut across the interests of several sectors in the industry, especially where it is understood that a flop in one sector of marketing ecosystem is a potential catastrophe for the other.
“Our people cannot continue to relegate our value in pursuit of pecuniary gains in a careless and self-deprecating manner. “Unethical marketing practices cannot be permitted to influence or determine the direction of professional objectives. If the marketing industry fails to understand and abide by expected rules, it will allow the dynamics of disreputable objectives to determine her professional values.
“Legality and decency in marketing are vital elements that the industry cannot manage to compromise. The Nigeria marketing industry is encouraged to support a series of reforms aimed at ensuring responsible marketing practices”, he explained.
He hailed the NIMN for being formidable and consistent in shaping the quality of marketing in Nigeria by the productive and pragmatic programmes beneficially structured to enhance and increase activities in the industry.
“NIMN has immensely contributed and advanced the growth of Nigeria’s economy in her own way. The role of marketing cannot be neglected or underestimated by any economy that genuinely seeks to develop and sustain the development of her economic progress”, the ARCON President added.