WANTED: A 21st C ‘ANTI-IGNORANCE’ ADVERTISING REVOLUTION by Dr. Tony Marinho

IDEASBRIDGE ideas worth spreading – Hopefully


WANTED: A 21st C ‘ANTI-IGNORANCE’ ADVERTISING REVOLUTION


PROBLEM: I see the central problem in our society as ‘Ignorance’, Ignorance about ‘everything. Important’. Yet there is great knowledge about ‘nothing’ or ‘everything unimportant’. The vision vibrates and the eardrums resound to the stimulation of nothing – adverts, music and mindless entertainment with little ‘life skill’ information of importance. Every Nigerian sees at least 100 soft drink adverts/signs daily but how many social message adverts tell him to do something positive -things that will save his life?


If Coca Cola can persuade 5 billion in the world that they need a particular mixture of excess sugar, flavouring and water to be ‘cool’ then why can we not use the same advertorial blitz ‘Coca Cola saturation Method’ for the transmission of serious social messages that will benefit society and us. Imagine a world in which everyone kept to the speed limit because of a constant speed limit media blitz. No one talks of Coca Cola fatigue so why should there be seatbelt or crash helmet message fatigue?

CASE STUDY: 220,000 human beings or 700 jumbo jets full of people died in the Tsunami.
Almost none of them knew about the signs of a Tsunami but 99.9% knew about Coca Cola. If Coca Cola had run a advert ‘

‘Drink Coca Cola… but if the tide goes out suddenly
run to high ground as it may be a Tsunami’

most of those people would be alive today gratefully drinking millions of bottles of Coca Cola- the brand that also proved it loves them. A girl, Sally Tilly, saved 100 people on her beach with the Tsunami information she had learnt from a school geography lesson.

Question: Do your advert agency and advertiser demonstrate that they love you or are they just after your money caring little whether you live or die in between product consumption or one advert and the next?

TWO EXAMPLES OF WHERE SUCH MESSAGES WERE FORCIBLY INTRODUCED BY THE CORPORATE WORLD BUT FOR THE WRONG ‘NON-ALTUISTIC’ REASONS:

a) Anti-smoking social life skill message on cigarette packets
b) Anti excess drinking social life skill message on alcoholic drink adverts... DRINK RESPONSIBLY

Both were introduced after millions of deaths from smoke related cancers and ill health and drink driving, liver failure and drunken brawls and assaults.
Ask not whether the social message is effective. If the commercial message is then so is the social message. Even one life influenced is unquantifiable in medical expenses saved or income guaranteed for a family’s ‘saved’ breadwinner’.
Drink XYZ and remember that Speed does not only kill other people. It could kill you and deprive your children of education, food and progress.

PROBLEM: No money for social life skill messages
PROBLEM: No political or social will for social life skill messages
PROBLEM: No responsibility for social life skill messages…Government/ public media/ teachers/ parents and if they all fail?
PROBLEM: No media space for social messages –funding/ media responsibility to fill empty space with useful messages instead of mindless music?

SOLUTION: Advertising of both the primary product and the secondary ‘social skill’ message in Dual, Piggyback or Add-on Messaging. It is a way of keeping customers alive longer to enjoy the products and of course pay you handsomely for them. The message does not have to be related to the product. The message can be in the background – a safety belt or crash helmet being used by the speaker advertising insurance of a snack bar. If an advert does not have a secondary message, subtle or overt, an opportunity has been lost for reinforcement of the primary message by ‘ image’ or ‘word’ or ‘object’ association for example a Coca Cola bottle and a safety belt, crash helmet or a library book. Every time one is seen thereafter the other will be remembered. And it costs nothing extra. No extra time, no extra printing, no extra airtime to pay for. Once the message is conceived it is added to the text or the picture or the scenery of the original primary commercial message. It can be incorporated into the message or merely left to be picked up from the background by the customer or viewer.

PROBLEM: The world budget for advertising is many $100bs. The world budget for Ignorance Eliminating social life skill messages advertising is less than $100m. In Nigeria infamously and shamefully we use aid money of the American Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pay for previously empty media time to teach our own Nigerian youth to be AIDS aware. All other social skill advertising depended on the benevolence or otherwise of the media networks or was painfully funded at commercial rates by NGOs. Our own NGO Educare Trust can claim to have spent over N1m on this enterprise as well as receiving a lot or gratis media time for its social message adverts. But it is nowhere near enough to combat the massive void of social ignorance in Nigeria. There is no financial reward from telling people about Sickle Cell or Breast lumps or EFCC or NAFDAC messages so why should social messages be charged at commercial ‘Coca Cola’ rates? But the national economic gains are as yet unquantified. What is the cost benefit to a family, a community, a nation of not dying at 35 from bad water typhoid, or no net malaria or bad antenatal care or in a car crash from someone else’s speeding and recklessness?

No one will die without commercial advertising but they die daily from lack of social life skills advertising/messaging.
There are maybe 100 urgent UN/ WHO/ UNESCO/ UNICEF/ HABITAT and other locally relevant social life skill messages that need to be brought to the attention of every human being worldwide daily.

The VUKA Awards and the ACT advertisers are wonderful examples of social messaging but they are on satellite TV and not on local TV for the edification of the masses and they are primary mono-messages not dual messages.
SOLUTION:

A) Marry the two forms of messaging so that the rich commercial advert carries a poor social message bringing $100bs to social messaging for free.
B) A dedicated social message media budget blitz with increase budgets for social messaging
C) Reduce social message airtime costs. Commercial messages get out because someone will make money in return. We as human beings must see the need to get the social message out in exactly the same way because the world will make money in return from saved lives, longer productivity per capita, less disease and longer healthier and happier living. Society makes or does not lose money if everyone drives safely or sends their children to school, or reads a book a week or gets fewer or less severe malaria or cancer attacks. The cost and reach of the sickle Cell message versus the bone marrow stem cells.

PROBLEM: Not enough Media time for social messages to change the world, and eliminate ignorance as a cause of misery.

SOLUTION: World Media Social Responsibility Law for every media outlet to ‘include in every 24 hours of broadcasting 1 hour of 60-120 messages of 30-60 seconds per day on chosen social life skill change messages to bring about behavioural change in human society’.

There is no cost put to good behavior and beneficial practices but the social scientist should cost ‘good’ as well as ‘bad’. Governments and companies would do well to advertise among the target groups with social messages for social effects in society. Government Message/Media time Budgets need massive increases and advertising agencies need to turn their attention to ‘saving society’ not as an aside as a petty Corporate Social Responsibility CSR Service but as a business strategy for governments and the corporate world. Society is drifting into ignorance driven anarchy. Analysis of the + vs - media messages is not encouraging.

PROBLEM: Few social life skill messages in the print media Vs millions of kilometers of monomessage Packaging, packets, Product Labels, Posters, Billboards, Newspaper adverts in millions for commercial products each with some ‘Waste/ Unused space’- Bonanzas, Promos, Invitations.

SOLUTION: Marry a social skill message into the ‘waste/Unused space’ of every commercial printed advert and billboard at no extra cost to the shareholder.
A short cut is achieving all of the above is to Introduce Social Message Award categories into all Media and Advertising Award Competitions


QUATERNARY EDUCATION –A WEAPON OF IGNORANCE ELIMINATION

PROBLEM: Incomplete education. A study of education in developed countries will yield that the component parts of education Pre & Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education they are incomplete of themselves as they form three segments of a circle which is completed with a fourth segment. That segment is what I call QUATERNARY defined as the fourth part, the seal to a complete education.

Abroad, the site for Quaternary Education is out of classroom, in school clubs, holiday camps and activities, travel, exhibitions and museums where knowledge is imparted casually, informally, enthusiastically and enjoyably. Nigeria’s Museums are ‘Ancient and not Modern’. We offer little to our youth as edutainment and then raise alarm when they fall by the wayside or are misled while we are at the terrible Bs- Birthdays, Betrothals and Burials. We should be ashamed of ourselves for not providing better for our youth. Nowhere to go and get edutainment. All of us in this room go abroad to the Smithsonian, The National Gallery, The Natural History Museum, various Aquaria but as Lagbaja would sing ‘Nothing for you-th’. We need such magnificent youth buildings here but our magnificent banks and business are preoccupied with the petty. Though there is an MTN Science Centre in South Africa the company has not seen fit to do a similar project here for our youth. Cadbury has no chocolate Museum, Oceanic Bank has no Aquarium, Glo has no IT Exhibition space to titillate our brains. Government’s preoccupation with self has made it lose sight of good ideas. The Abuja Yar’Adua Centre built by Julius Berger is crying out for replication in ‘betta buildings’ across the country and is a good example worth cloning in science and the arts. At last we are about to expend N14b to execute 10-15 mega Zonal Youth Centres and a N7b Obasanjo Library Complex Project but have few cheap but effective libraries and youth centres within ‘walking distance’ reach of the majority of the 60m+ youth. We sacrifice the good idea for the grand gesture and elevate the white elephant to the only elephant we will ever get, while we need a herd of normal small ‘grey elephant’ projects that work for our people.

SOLUTION: Allocate space, funds, time and professionals to YOUTH TARGETTED CENTRES and BUILDINGS. Imagine a Trenchard Hall sized building transferred to Trans Amusement Wonderland or the airport or Samonda and with 100 rooms on three or four floors with every single career explained in entertaining and educational detail. Imagine the building holding an aquarium, exhibits in science and technology etcetera set up by every department of UI and Polytechnic staff and students. Imagine rooms allocated to all sectors of the economy and Corporate Nigeria filled with mini-factories and explanatory models and NIGERSATCOM 1 pictures and models. Trenchard Hall was built in 1954. We have built little since. Imagine a modern ‘crazy’ building with an open mouthed elephant, lion or crocodile entrance to attract the youth and shaped like the body of an elephant, lion or crocodile sleeping lion or crocodile. Why one and not 500 or 1000 such buildings for youth employment, inspiration and empowerment and run with NYSC.

PROBLEM: ‘Nothing for YOU-TH’ to misquote Lagbaja at the local ward level-within walking distance.

SOLUTION: Each ward should have a nonpartisan WARD INSPIRATIONAL YOUTH CENTRE using the expertise of the NYSC to manage it. It should contain chairs, exhibits, posters, IT, Public address system, computer, library, games, role models and be a permanent receptacle for the display of ignorance eliminating information posters from government agencies like NAFDAC, FRSC, ICPC, EFCC, JAMB etc and NGOs- 14,600 needed.


A parting thought >>>>>:
POSER
TV Breaking News Bar – Running Vs Pop-up bar: The pop-up bar is better than the runner as it is faster, less distracting, needs less concentration to read or ‘take in’ in speed reading, less is missed and reduces being a slave to the bar seeking uncompleted information acquisition to the detriment of the actual programme being watched. The pop-up bar & the runner bar are to eliminate perceived ‘ignorance’ and can be recruited to the battle for the brain especially the youth brain-often declared brain-dead or at least empty by worried parents world over. Can it be used to reduce/ treat ‘ignorance’ as a disease?

SUGGESTION: Extend this pop-up news bar containing news, views, exhortations and even quizzes to most other programmes especially those targeting the ‘ignorant and unimaginative’ youth glued to the TV watching endless ‘mindless’ music on Channel O and Cartoon Channels and even film channels and local TV stations.
Hoped-for result - Better informed youth beginning to hunger for knowledge under peer – I can read quicker than you- pressure, teach speed-reading to youngsters if under cartoons. Introduce moral issues –have you helped your parents today/ cleaned your room/ brushed your teeth and washed your clothes and relevant national and other news in case of a national or local emergency. Such a move would bring billions of youth into the ‘casual knowledge gain’ realm and change the world. If we do not enter the world of youth we cannot feed them information.
Ps:
PROBLEM: No place to walk for pedestrians due to traders, wares, goods, kiosks and public transport-okada and danfos blocking the road edge and forcing youth and adults to walk in the road where they are cut down by vehicles.
SOLUTION: Introduce a 5 feet or 2.5metres pedestrian walkway free space at side of every road.
Our pathetic Olympic failures are traceable directly to a lack of long term 10 year scouting / coaching/ /camping database driven ‘Catch, feed and train them young to be champions not just winners’ programmes – The Okada mania can be channeled into a number of motor cycling tracks around the country for racing.

Area boys can combat each other in physical sports like weightlifting and wrestling.
Thank you for your precious time!!



SUMMARY towards eliminating the disease ‘Ignorance’
1. Advertise Prim +Second ‘social skill’ messages
2. And on All packaging/products/ billboards/ posters.
3. Reduce soc message airtime costs/ increase access.
4. World Media Social Responsibility Law
5. Increase govt. / corporate budgets for soc messaging
6. TARGETTED YOUTH INSPIRATION CENTRES and ‘CRAZY’ EXHIBITION BUILDINGS.
7. Extend the pop-up news bar to other programmes
8. Introduce a 5 feet or 2.5metres pedestrian walkway
9. Invest CSR in youth exhib / sports struct. & activit.
10. Introd Soc Message Awards in Med & Adv Awards