1.0 Introduction
1:1 Background Of The Study.
According to Dominick (2002:369), Advertising is any paid form of non-personal, presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, services usually paid for by an identified sponsor. From the foregoing, certain words of elaboration, advertising is “non personal”, it is directed towards a large group of anonymous people, even direct mail advertising, which may be addressed to specific person, is prepared by a computer and signed by a machine.
Many attempts were made in the past to formulate a definition of advertising, one of such attempts led by the American Marketing Associations (AMA 1977) Cited in Suleiman (2004:35) says. Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods, services or ideas by identified sponsors.
Secondly, advertising typically “paid for”. This fact differentiates advertising from publicity, which is not usually purchased. Sponsors such as Globacom Nigeria limited pay for the time and space they use to get their message across. Non-profit organizations, such as the Red Cross, advertise but do not pay for time space. Newspapers run these adverts free as public services.
Thirdly for obvious reasons, the sponsor of the advert is the brain behind the advert otherwise, why advertising? Perhaps the only situation, in which the identification of the advertiser may not be self-evident, is political advertising. Because of this, publishers will not accept a political advert without a statement identifying those responsible for it.
Newspaper advertising in Nigeria can be traced to the growth of commercial activities even before the arrival of the white man. The methods of advertising prior to the arrival of the whites according to Ogbodoh (1990) cited in Okunna (2002:86) were town crier shouting and calling peoples attention to a situation or event in the town.
Ekwelie in his book ‘Mass Media and National Development’ opines that before the emergence of cities, villages and little neighborhoods had ways of advertising wares.
In communities children would sing recognizable songs to announce the availability of goods when in cities, today, and one can still hear the mating song of pap sellers.
The view that traders were satisfied with the spreading of their waves on the ground waiting for customers to make their first advance is entirely misleading. Traders called the attention of prospective customers to the excellent quality and quantity of their goods and sometimes coined slogan to give added effect to their usually exaggerated claims.
However, modern day newspaper advertising began in 1859, while the commercial advertising started in 1928 when West African Publicity (WAP) and the fore runner of lintas were established by United African Company (UAC). In 1859, the English Reverend gentleman, Henry Townsend established the first Newspaper in Nigeria called Iwe iroyin fun Egba ati Yoruba. Though the newspaper was mainly for ecclesiological matters, it carried advertisement on birth, weddings, deaths, church activities and vacancies for house boy and maid ship schedules and other social events.
Iwe Irohin blazed the trail in newspaper advertisement and established, newspapers such as Anglo African, The Lagos Observer, The Eagle, The Lagos weekly record, the critic and Mirror e.t.c. in the Lagos colony and after 1914 when the amalgamation had taken place.
Advertising business received a boost as from the 1920s when business activities in Lagos and its environs peaked. Many foreign companies such as Lever Brothers, Raleigh Bicycle, Dunlop, Pz, NACCET, Cadbury, Good year Tyres, Ovaltine, Nugget, Guinness, and Schnapps were bases in Lagos.
The West African Publicity provided advertising services to these companies through the “three ps”- poster, press and pamphlet.
Posters happened to the most dominant medium, while WAP (West African Publicity) concentrated very much on site purchase and acquisition. Over three hundred (300) sites were acquired along Nigeria sites at post offices, market places and road function in many towns. No doubt, WAP (West African Publicity) become the indisputable poster monarchs of Nigeria. With the increased political tempo between 1930 and 1950, many Newspaper, were established and commercial advertising became a major source of revenue for them.
Glo Gateway, a subsidiary of GLO, is GLO’s International Wholesale Voice and Data Exchange Trading Business Unit. Due to an expansion program which took place in 2008, Glo Gateway now covers 140 countries under its roaming services, and it is currently connected to 235 networks. Year 2008 also saw growth in Glo’s data roaming for mobile phones, laptopsand BlackBerry handsets, which has now spread to 72 networks in 29 countries. This now gives GLO the largest roaming coverage for voice and data in Africa. Glo Gateway recently acquired a license in Côte d’Ivoire.
As a part of Glo’s service offering, Glo Broad Access will be vastly improved by the laying of the fibre optic cable for the metro ring, which is progressing steadily. The Glo Broad Access was launched on the 24th of November 2009.
Glo Broad Access offers landline telephones, broadband internet and video, all on a single digital wire line.
Glo-1(a network technology) is the first successful submarine cable from the United Kingdom to Nigeria, and GLO is the first individual African company to embark on such a project.
Glo-1 (a network technology) has the potential to provide high speed internet services, faster, more reliable and cheaper telecom services for the public. Glo-1 will potentially facilitate foreign investment and employment opportunities especially to Africans.
The 9,800 km long cable originates from Bude in the UK and it is laid from this origin to Alpha Beach in Lagos, where it will have its landing Station. Glo-1 will also improve teleconferencing, distant learning, disaster recovery and telemedicine among several other benefits for Nigerians and the people of West Africa.
In August 2003, Glo Mobile was launched in Nigeria. Glo Mobile introduced lower tariffs, pay per second billing and alongside other value added services. Although Glo Mobile was the fourth GSM operator to launch in Nigeria, within seven years of the company’s operation, its subscriber base has grown to over 25 million.
In June 2008, Glo Mobile was launched in the Republic of Benin. Glo Mobile showed unprecedented growth through the sale of 600,000 SIM cards in the first ten days of operation. Glo Mobile offered Per Second Billing, which charges subscribers for the exact airtime used. They also offered other value added services such as MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), Glo Magic Plus, news and information, vehicle tracking, musical ring-back tones and mobile banking.
In May 2008, GLO acquired an operating license through its Glo Mobile division in Ghana and plans to capture 30% of then current 11 million subscriber market within 18 months of launch. They plan on achieving this goal by launching with bundled voice and Internet services for Ghana and through specifically targeting ‘un-serviced’ areas outside Ghana’s two major cities, Accra and Kumasi. Glo Mobile was set to launch in Ghana the first quarter of 2010. This has however been postponed to the third quarter of 2011, and again to 2012. In january 2012, Glo Ghana opened the “Reserve your number” campaign, but still without opening the network. On April 8, 2011 GLO launched the sub-marine optical fiber GLO1, one part of its maiden operation in Ghana, to usher in another major player in the Ghana telecommunication industry.
In October 2009, GLO acquired submarine cable landing rights and International Gateway Services in Côte d’Ivoire
The company also provides marketing functions for companies outside the Globacom Nigeria Limited (Nigeria) division. Newspaper adverts have played a dominant role in the growth of Globacom Nigeria Limited, the role that Newspaper adverts played is as follows:
- It gives necessary awareness and exposure of the company product to the general public.
- It encourages brand loyalty, which gives reason for a repeat purchase.
- It motivates consumers to buy the products.
One of the methods of advertising used by Globacom Nigeria Limited to reach their public is through Newspaper. They also engage in out door activities like sales promotion and exhibition, where they give out T. shirts, P-caps and plastic containers, which bear the company names on them to distributors and customers,
The organizations also carry out advertising campaigns nationwide and they do this through the Newspapers. Advertising is very essential for the development of Globacom Nigeria Limited, it is vital to the extent that they cannot survive without it. The main purpose of the organization is to get market to satisfy the needs of the people in return, for profit. Hence without Advertisement nobody will come to know their products, let alone purchasing their products and the information they need about a particular product.
Whenever Globacom Nigeria Limited advertise their product, they recorded high sale of their products to the extent that they has to increase their production to meet the demands of their numerous customers and this have tremendously brought development to the organization.
The companies advertise a particular product from its introductory stage, at its maturity stage sometimes depending on the season as the demand for some products is seasonal. The money spent on advertisement by Globacom Nigeria Limited does not affect them negatively, in the sense that when they advertise they create awareness in the minds of the people as a result of this they widen their market share, what they gain outweigh what they spend.
