A new dawn in advertising

“ Every morning in Africa, a gazette awakens knowing that it must outrun the fastest lion if it wants to stay alive. The lion also wakes up knowing it must run faster than the slowest gazette, or it will starve to death. It makes no difference, whether you are a lion or gazette, when the sun comes up, you will better be running”, so says an African adage.
The Ghanaian economy has become so competitive that it has resulted in a daily struggle of corporate bodies for their survival.
In effect, some of these corporate bodies have resorted to doing everything possible to either stay on top or maintain their share of the market.
As a result of the competitive nature of the market, these corporate bodies have devised ingenious but aggressive strategies of informing the public about the availability of their products and services.
The adoption of these new strategies has helped some of the corporate bodies to expand their frontiers and are growing from strength to strength, whilst those who have refused to join the new trend have been kept crawling along the way. For those Companies which have been left behind in the competitive market environment, it is not for the reasons that they lack vision, creativity, motivation, challenge, setbacks and failures.
Those who have succeeded have managed their growth, adapted to changes, overcome market failures and fought hard against all odds on the market.
The ‘dog eats dog’ syndrome has resulted in some companies adopting new strategies of doing business, which has gone a long way in destroying the environment.
Today, some corporate bodies have adopted ‘appropriate’ local technology by using Trees along the major streets of urban Towns and Cities to publicize their products, instead of using the widely acknowledged and accepted use of Billboards for advertising. This unorthodox corporate practice is gradually gaining grounds in the country.
The country faces the risk of losing the trees which provide scenic beauty and protect human lives by removing emissions of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Much as this strategy works, it has serious repercussion on the environment. Unfortunately, those who carry out the ‘Tree Billborads’ do it in a haphazard manner by cutting the tree branches to design their adverts. Our lives depend on the greens around us without which our survival is meaningless. Plants inhale carbon dioxide that has been exhaled by man coupled with other nutrients in the soil for survival. Likewise, man also breathes in oxygen exhaled by plants for survival.
Global climatic changes have resulted in heat waves from the scorching sun. The destruction of plant life is a contributing factor to this climatic phenomenon. The simple answer is that our environment is dying as a result of environmental degradation of which bad corporate practices are a major contributor.
Whilst some institutions, individuals and other cooperate bodies are spending millions of cedis to save the environment, others are also doing their very worst to destroy it.
Almost all the trees along the principal streets in the Cities and Towns have been branded with one advert or the other.
The trees along 1st Jawaharlah Neru road in Cantonments, Liberation circle, Castle road and some other streets in the Ministries area have not been spared this new craze of ‘Tree Billboards’. Some of the major Institutional Corporate Oraganisations that engage in this practice include the Telecom Companies, Banks, Breweries, Educational Institutions and Political Parties among others.
The City authorities have remained unconcerned about the menace. An overseer at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Timothy Oman, in an interview with the paper revealed that Pepsi-cola as part of its sponsorship deal for hosting the African cup of nations (CAN2008) resorted to branding all the trees in the metropolis, to advertise to its customers. “What you are witnessing is a paid for advert by Pepsi-cola. It is part of the company’s investment package for hosting the African Cup of Nations in the country”, he noted. When questioned whether this art of branding by Pepsi-cola does not pose any threat to the trees, he said “a committee was set up to see how best Pepsi-cola goes about with its adverts in the city, of which a member from the Department of Parks and Gardens was included. So if the branding exercise was going to have any damage to the trees, we would have been told’.
The branding of the trees has been done in a form of mini flags nailed to the trees along the streets. The environmental protection Agency (EPA) early this month stated that negative human activities had contributed immensely to climate change.
According to the Brong Ahafo regional Director of the EPA, Isaac Osei, climate change was a man-made global threat to the sustainability of life on earth, hence the need for attitudinal change to minimize the destruction of the environment.
Concerned with the impact of global warming as a result of climatic change, the Berekum Municipal Chief Executive, Kwabena Kyere-Yeboah cautioned Ghanaians to protect trees in their communities, since they (trees) protect human being in several ways.
The programme’s coordinator of friends of the Earth-Ghana, Noble Waadza in an interview with the paper noted that nailing of adverts on trees subject the trees to death.
According to him, the nail creates holes in the tree which makes it prone to bacteria infections and other diseases.
“A nail can bleed a tree to death if the sap runs out. The tree is just like the human being which needs to be protected. Any external force on it exposes it to danger.
Branding of the trees also takes away their value.
This bad corporate practice needs to stop. We need to preserve our environment because our lives depend on it”, he added.