2012 seen as difficult year for advertisers

PILI, Camarines Sur—The country’s advertising industry may experience a difficult year in 2012 as it feels the effects of the economic turmoil in the United States and Europe, according to an industry player.

“This coming year may be a little more difficult because major countries are undergoing some economic downturn,” said Andre Kahn, chairman of the Advertising Board of the Philippines (AdBoard).

But Kahn is still optimistic, citing the continuing strength of the peso and the Philippines as still one of the best investment areas.

The AdBoard is implementing “game-changing” revisions in the protocols of the association which Kahn will unveil today in the 22nd Ad Congress being held under its auspices at the CamSur Watersports Complex (CWC) here.

“The most critical change after a quarter of a century is to make the membership of the AdBoard open to other associations that are involved in what is now known as the marketing communications industry,” Kahn said.

For the past 25 years, he said the advertising industry had changed and evolved into an integrated marketing communications industry.

New manual

“It took us two years to reengineer the AdBoard. What is significant is, it used to be two major sectors controlling the AdBoard—the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (Pana) and the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4A). It took a lot of convincing and discussion to show that under the new digital age, we have to all be on an even playing field,” he said.

Kahn noted that with the advent of the digital age, even the parameters of how the stakeholders in the industry would deal with each other have changed.

He said  the AdBoard would also come out with a new “Trade and Practice Manual,” that dictates how each one of the association members could relate to each other.

It had taken the AdBoard two years to “clean up and define the parameters for the manual,” he said.