CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Advertising has grown increasingly popular as an object of
academic inquiry, a field of professional practice and an index of modern
business. It has come to assume the centre of modern marketing and it is
one of the major forms of promotion in product and service marketing.
Billboard advertising has assumed a wider and prominent position in product
promotion in recent times in Nigeria. Despite electronic media, billboard advertising
got product promotion on the increase.
This new discovery in product promotion has not only given rise to
advertising agencies that specialized only in billboard advertising, and also a
strong association of billboard advertising in Nigeria which is recognized by
advertisers as a subsidiary of the advertising practitioner Council of Nigeria
APCON. But as has been articulated by Adeyemi (1969), the constitutional
provision on freedom of expression can be said to amount only to an ordered
freedom of which cannot be used as a license to spread communication that
debased public morality. However, many of these ethical principles have
in the course of time grown to become statutory regulation codified laws.
Decree 55 of 1988 among other provisions provides that APCON show regular and
control the practice of advertising in all its aspects and ramifications.
It is in exercise of this immense and wide power conferred on it, that APCON
developed a code of ethics to guide and regulate the practice of advertising in
Nigeria. The evidence increase in billboard advertising under sources the
effectiveness of billboard in project promotion. Billboards ensure
frequent and repeated exposure to the advertisement. Billboards are
usually located at points with higher vehicular and human traffic.
Consequently, users of such points are regularly exposed to the
advertisement in the board. Secondly, billboard, also offer a high degree
of locational flexibility. In other words, the boards can be placed where
the advertisers actually intended them to be. In addition, they tend it
has lower cost per thousand that most of the other media. They are
usually more cost efficient, especially for the advertiser with a small
budget. Billboard offers the advantage of very good colour reproduction
and at the same time it is an effective reminder medium offer servicing as a
catalyst for buyer who buy io impulse. The greatest problems encountered
by advertisers and their agencies with regard to billboard are site monitoring.
Monitoring is usually difficult and so when posters get torn or washed out, it
takes a while to discover and repost. This is because the sites are
usually scattered around very far geographical locations.
The posters used on the boards are usually tedious to print and
post especially when the number of sites to be covered are too many. In
other to be covered are too many. In other words, boards make intense
creative demands on the agency. Because they are usually seen in a
fleeting second, they have to be powerfully executed so as to intrude on the
passers-by’s consciousness. In this case they tend to function better as
reminder media and therefore cannot serve well as the primary and sole medium
for an advertising campaign. Aside its cost efficient contributes to
environmental aesthetic and enduring feature of landscape of towns, in the
country. Although the voice of the street vendor in Nigeria grows fainter
with each passing year, it is still possible to hear the mournful call and
tinkling bell of the old clothes and junk man, the call of the itinerant fruit
peddler with his pushcart, or the street corner vendor of hot chestnuts.
And what will a football game be without the kids hawking peanut and soft
drinks? Much the same call in a different language, echoed in the street. Again,
if you will glance down the length of the street in Enugu metropolis, you will
notice that the storekeeper around the town have taken some pains to make sure
they are not unobserved just as the market keepers did in Ogbete main market so
you can see that broadcast advertising (Billboard) have all been around for a
long time. But it wasn’t until the middle ages, with the world shaking
advent of the printing press and moveable type, the advertising began to take
the firm most familiar to us today.
Winstan Fletch, (1979), identifies the following determinant of
the strength of a billboard advertising, such as, the number of posters put in
any given area the size of the poster, the specific sitting of the poster and
the length of the campaign. Because of the problem of more boards in a
given area, the greater the problem of dotter, many authorities regulate the
sitting of boards as to prevent their indiscriminate location poster come in
standard sizes referred to as sheets. The dimensions of a single sheet
are usually expressed in inches for easy handling and processing. A
single limit of sheet is usually 20 inches wide by 30 inches deep. The
most commonly available poster formats are 16 sheets, 32 sheets and 48 sheets. In
addition, there is the painted board or bulletin boards, which are hand-painted
(instead of printed posters) and typical sizes are 14 feet by 48 feet.
Posters sited at busy locations or junctions with high human and vehicular
traffic are often more effective than those at less endowed locations.
Furthermore, the longer the duration of a campaign the more impact it tend to
have. Outdoor advertising has become a major advertising firms in Enugu
metropolis and an indispensable source of revenue for Enugu State Government.
While advertisers buy space in Newspapers and magazines, for outdoor they rent
sites. In Enugu metropolis, renting a site centers on an advertiser the
right of having his poster displayed on the site. To do this, advertiser
or his agency will retain an outdoor advertising company. The advertising
companies will have to usually built and acquire a particular site it wants or
chooses from the ones the billboard company supplies. It pays the outdoor
agency for the production of the posters as well as rental fee for the
sites. Its media and client service monitor the posting to ensure that
all the sites are constantly and clearly posted throughout the duration of the
campaign.
For all the media enumerated, management of the advertising
operation is very delicate task, since in most cases, advertising represents a
significant source of corporate profitability. For billboard companies
particularly, the key task will entail keeping a tab on advertising agencies
and solicitation so that they can use the billboard firm for their
campaign. Other task include monitoring of sites to ensure that posters
are in good order and properly posted, invoicing agencies for sites created and
posted, ensuring prompt payments and prompt
payment of rental charges to the state government via local authorities.
In executing this research, the researcher will try to identify why billboard
advertising seems to be more popular than other means of advertising in terms
of product promotion in Enugu metropolis. Also this study will try to
find out the acceptability of billboard advertising in the society. Among
other things, this study also hopes to establish the contribution of billboards
to product promotion and consumption.
1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEMS
There has been an appreciable growth in product and services
promotion activities by marketers in Nigeria, especially through
advertising. Recently, below, the line advertising especially billboard
has gained tremendous popularity. Going round the major roads and street
in Enugu metropolis particularly strategic location will reveal the degree of
usage ad number of colourful billboard of various sizes carrying advertisement
promotion products of various manufactures.
They are located in strategic traffic points. Also rural
areas are not spread of this billboard galore. Why his sudden increase in
the use of billboard? Could it be that billboard has acquired new potency
for product promotion? This and many were ignited the researcher, to look
into the effect of billboard in product promotion with special emphasis on
Enugu metropolis as a case study.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This study has among other objective the following.
1 To
examine the significant of billboard advertisement as it affects product promotion in the market place
2 To determine the
effectiveness of billboard advertising in product promotion.
3
To determine the extent to which
Indomie company in utilize billboards for promotion.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS.
For this study, the
following questions are raised.
1 What
is the significant of billboard advertisement as it affects product promotion in the market place
2 What is the
effectiveness of billboard advertising in product promotion?
3 How does billboard
advertisement appeals to prospective product consumers.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study brings to our knowledge the degree of influence other
product promotion activities and advertising exerts on billboard advertising.
The study will also serve as a guide to manufacturers and advertisers
in their day-to-day management of product promotion via the billboard
advertising. On the other hand, this study will serve as literature/good
feasibility study for prospective investors in billboard advertising
sub-sectors.