Not much is known about the practice of lobbying in the media industry but in a crucial pre-election year, lobbying activity has reached a fever pitch.
Unlike the UK, the European Union and the US, which have mandatory transparency registers, lobbyists in South Africa do not have to register or disclose their clients or lobbying expenditures. Often tucked away in nondescript offices like corporate and regulatory affairs or stakeholder engagement, teams of lobbyists, lawyers, consultants and academics pore over government white papers and municipal regulations to eke out any advantage for their companies.
Lobbyists are the reason why we have no overarching regulatory framework for out-of-home media. As a devolved function managed through individual city bylaws, influencing elected legislators and officials can have surprising results that can limit competitors, advance or stall product innovations and manage available inventory. In addition to these local regulations, sites located at national key points like airports, railways, bus stations or any other locations declared by the minister of safety and security are subject to the National Key Points Act.
Advertising faces on or visible from national roads are regulated separately through SANRAL. Securing out-of-home licenses is based on lobbyists successfully navigating this web of regulations. Knowing which regulatory levers to pull can have an oversized impact on a media owner’s ability to scale across geographies and build an attractive out-of-home advertising portfolio.
Increasingly, communities are in on it too, lobbying policymakers on a host of interventions such as sugar taxes, salt content in savoury snacks, and product labelling regulations. All of these have the potential of increasing marketing and distribution costs. There have been important legal precedents initiated by communities that have halted shale gas exploration in the Karoo and seismic surveys for oil off the Wild Coast.
Community-led court action has been matched by equally aggressive social mobilisation and protests with adverse reputational consequences for petroleum companies. Social media campaigns initiated by consumers can also morph into legislative action that puts the spotlight on product pricing. The viral Twitter protest #DataMustFall led to Parliamentary hearings and a subsequent drop in mobile data costs by the telcos.
Lobbyists can stall important pieces of legislation, particularly those that enhance consumer protection by overwhelming the legislative process through public submissions. To fulfil its international obligations, the government must ensure that it advances its legal frameworks to protect citizens and local industry. But new crosscutting disciplines like digitalisation are under-resourced and underfunded in the public service.
As a result, the government is unable to enforce the POPI Act, despite it being enacted by Parliament in 2013. Consumers are bombarded with addressable advertising through telemarketing messages, social media-promoted messages, sms and email spam for products ranging from microlending to adult content, using data harvested without the consumers’ consent.
While corporate lobbyists have significant resources and access to politicians, community activists are not to be underestimated. By tapping into a network of global social movements and volunteers, they can often outmanoeuvre corporate lobbying efforts by targeting clients’ brand reputations. Where trust matters, politicians and institutional shareholders won’t touch tainted brands. Consumers are just as likely to punish politicians at the polls as they are to boycott brands and products.
With the national elections a little over twelve months away, lobbyists will be hard at work to secure or advance their client’s gains, hedging their bets on the electoral outcome of 2024. The revolving doors at regulators, corporates and NGOs will be whirring as senior executives move from one environment to the other, either to influence new legislation or as a reward for successfully delivering current regulations. In between heated debates over the impact of load shedding, we shouldn’t be surprised by legislators vigorously advocating for Parliamentary hearings into advertising industry transformation, the ownership of media, advertising expenditure, and party political advertising. Brace yourselves.
Donald Liphoko is a non-market strategist with an accomplished career as a senior public servant and advertising executive. His unique skill set brings a fresh set of independent and objective views to boards and executive management.
