The Advertising Association of Ghana (AAG) has organized a five-day refresher course for its members in Accra.

The training programme which was dubbed Creative Capacity and Innovation Competence Development took place at the Accra International School of Advertising and Design ( AiSAD ), and forms part of efforts aimed at upgrading the competence of industry players.

Facilitator for the course, Rhoda Onyinah expressed her joy for the overwhelming response and importance attached to the programme by member-agencies, saying it was an “acknowledgment of the skills gap bedeviling the industry.”

She added that AAG was committed to building the skills capacities of its members by supporting and developing new and innovative training product geared toward improving productivity at the workplace.  

“We want to see the training that they are getting reflect in their output in the industry. We should be able to see more entries from Ghana when it comes to the Cannes Awards next year. This year there were a couple of nominations from member-agencies but we are hoping to see more. I also wish to see better production at the Gong Gong Awards next year,” she said.

The 15-selected participants were taken through strategic planning, idea-generation techniques, creative brainstorming and how to take advantage of emerging new technologies.

The Founder and CEO of AiSAD, Christian Obeng Boadi revealed that the course content has strategically been designed to meet the individual needs of the applicants.

He, therefore, believed the initiative taken by the association, when sustained, would go a long way to improving the competitiveness of practitioners on the local and global market.

One of the participants, Nana Ama of TouchPoint Communications said “the course has given me some basic understanding of advertising strategies and developing ideas. Some of the areas we covered were new to me so I am also going to train my colleague so that we work in that regard.”

Alfred, a publicist also opined that the programme has extremely been beneficial to him as he had acquired brilliant ways of generating ideas.

“Moving forward I am going to do great stuff, so watch out for me as a publicist,” he said enthusiastically at the end of the programme.

The Creative Capacity and Innovation Competence Development Programme is an initiative by the AAG and supported by the Skills Development Fund. It is intended to train about 100 personnel in the advertising industry at the end of the programme.