EXMAN Officials Visit APCON

As part of its familiarisation tour, the executives of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria, EXMAN, recently visited the Lagos office of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON. Led by Kayode Olagesin, its president, the team also included Henry Alade and Kehinde Salami, the Publicity Secretary and Financial secretary respectively.

Speaking on the expediency of EXMAN as well as the visit to APCON, Olagesin said the association was borne out of the need to address the key challenges facing the experiential marketing practice in Nigeria. “Unlike other sectors of the advertising industry, our sector is not properly organised. That was why we decided to organise ourselves formally into a professional body with the purpose of building standards within the sector and help the larger Integrated Marketing Communications, IMC, industry to grow and also to strengthen ourselves by being each other’s brother’s keeper,” he said.

After the association’s inauguration last year, it spent some time building a strong foundation in order to register its presence in the minds of industry leaders. “So, we felt that it was important that we paid a visit to the different stakeholders within the IMC industry and we believe there is no stronger stakeholder than the APCON in the advertising industry,” Olagesin said as he presented the EXMAN Code of Conduct to the APCON officials, which he said was developed as a means of self-regulation to ensure that the experiential marketing profession is practiced according to strict professional and ethical standards.

Responding, Abimbola Ipaye, director, human resources, who stood in for APCON registrar, Garba Bello Kankarofi, said; “APCON is open to receive as many children as are willing to come to it. We assure you that we shall study your code of conduct and also look at how we can harmonise it for the suitability of the industry.” While admonishing the members of EXMAN to register as members of APCON as does everybody involved in any productive or profitable engagement within the industry, Ipaye lauded the idea of EXMAN and promised that the council would lend its support.