Price dumping poses key challenge to Lebanese advertising industry

09/06/2009 12:00 - 597 Views

BEIRUT: Dumping is one of the main challenges that the Lebanese advertising industry is facing, said president of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in Lebanon Atef Idriss. "The government should prevent imports that lead to dumping because this is disrupting our economy. Moreover, the government is not doing its part of the work and is avoiding implementing the anti-dumping law, which is affecting the local spending in the advertising sector in Lebanon," Idriss told The Daily Star.

"Dumping occurs when a non-Lebanese firm sells its product in Lebanon for less than it sells it in its own country, in order to gain market share or undermine an existing or emerging industry in Lebanon," said Idriss.

The Law on Anti-dumping, Countervailing and Safeguard Measures was ratified by Parliament in October 2006 and was later enacted

The law is among the conditions stipulated for WTO conformity and is on the agenda of the Economy and Trade Ministry.

"The government is signing a lot of important agreements without being able to fully implement them and follow up on their continuity," he said.

He continues by saying that this is affecting the advertising sector in Lebanon because companies are being negatively impacted by these unfair operations and activities, and when their profits go down the first thing they do is cut their advertising expenses.

"The government should work on creating job opportunities in this field in Lebanon by protecting the industry and preserving the rights of advertisers, otherwise Lebanese skills will have to travel and work outside their countries, and this is a great loss to our advertising sector," he added.

Mounir Torbey, secretary of general of the WFA in Lebanon and professor of marketing and consumer behavior at Kaslik University, believes that Lebanon should be the pioneer of advertising in the Arab world because it is the only country that has seven faculties teaching this major. However, he adds, the major challenge is lack of creativity.

"We have to work on improving the quality of our advertisements by boosting creativity, and providing good education to members and people working in the field of marketing and advertising through organizing workshops, seminars and training sessions," he said.

Torbey added that another very important challenge is advertising clusters where the advertisements that are shown on television are much longer than the programs themselves. "People get bored this way and they start zapping the channels. In peak times, 12 minutes should be more than enough; otherwise they won't generate good results," he added.

He said that counterfeiting and smuggling plague the various industries but these are the tribute that successful brands have to pay for the success they were able to achieve.

"After years of prosperity and achievements, the advertising industry in Lebanon are witnessing a downturn which necessitates the mobilization and active involvement of all its key active players," added Torbey. As a result, the Lebanese Association for Marketing and Advertising (LAMA) was created in 1995 to work in alliance with WFA with an aim to group advertisers in a unified organization and to better define their interests and problems, in addition to cooperating and exchanging ideas pertaining to marketing and advertising issues, he continues.

"It also aims at improving marketing and advertising standards by creating a proper communication framework among advertisers, media and advertising agencies," he said.

"We are trying to communicate with Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies that we know and suffering from counterfeit and smuggling activities to encourage them to join the Lebanon Brand Protection Group," said Idriss.

"It is an association of leading local, regional, and international manufacturers and distributors that joined efforts in March 2003 to fight counterfeit products in Lebanon and the Levant region," he added.

By Dana Halawi

Daily Star staff

Source: www.dailystar.com.lb