It was a solemn moment at the forecourt of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly when family, loved ones and sympathizers poured out tributes in honour of the late Torgbor Mensah, who until his demise was the President of the Advertising Association of Ghana.
Torgbor Mensah, who is also the Executive Chairman of The Great Argon Holdings, died on Saturday, October 23, 2021.
Mr. Torgbor Mensah was an accomplished advertising magnate, an industrialist, Estate Developer and a philanthropist.
Indeed, the history of the creative communication and real estate industries in Ghana cannot be accurately written without the mention of Mr. Tee as he was affectionately called by many.
His meteoric rise into prominence shows him to be a self-made man who, by sheer hard work and sustained obedience in apprenticeship, rose through the ranks to join the respected advertising practitioners in Ghana and certainly Africa.
Born of Ghanaian and Togolese parents, Mr. Torgbor Mensah started work at the Commercial Advertising Company (CADCO), a government-owned agency, in the early part of 1970 as a Junior Clerk of no trade or profession, but systematically trained on the job under able supervisors to become a prolific graphic designer of great intellect ready to learn everything and anything.
When CADCO folded up in or about 1974, Mr. Torgbor Mensah teamed up with his creative mentor at CADCO, to form an Outdoor Agency called USAS, what many considered at the time, as a youthful company.
Unfortunately, the partners of USAS did not stay together for long. The break-up of USAS, enabled Mr. Torgbor Mensah to form his own company, which he named Design, Display, Publicity (DDP).
As a start-up, Mr. Torgbor Mensah’s creative genius was put to the test, but the new company, DDP, proved a success. He solicited for outdoor contracts from agencies such as Afromedia, Lintas and GAM as well as other individual companies, and for these jobs, DDP executed to perfection.
The significant aspect of the growth of DDP was the Mr. Tee factor. Mr. Torgbor Mensah was DDP.
He was personally and actively involved and participated in all the jobs DDP meritoriously executed for its clients.
Among these jobs was the erection of outdoor promotional signs contracted by the then Pioneer Tobacco Company Limited to DDP for Embassy signage along the major highways of Accra – Kumasi, Accra – Takoradi and Accra – Ho.
Mr. Tee later testified that the returns from the signage project very much enhanced the financial and operational status of his firm, DDP.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tee had plunged into his continental expansion initiatives in the outdoor industry.
He established affiliations in Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, La Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Chad, Niger Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa making DDP Limited, Ghana’s biggest Outdoor Advertising Company.
Speaking at a night vigil in his honour on Friday, February 4, 2022, the Executive Director of the Advertising Association of Ghana, Francis Dadzie, described him as “a man of humility, innovator, initiator and a man who tried to fill the unemployment gap in this country”.
According to Mr. Dadzie, it was the philosophy of the late Torgbor Mensah that “if you eat alone, you vomit alone”.
Tributes from the Dean of Metropolitan Municipal and District Chief Executives, MMDCEs, in Accra, corporate entities, former government appointees all pointed to the fact that the late Torgbor Mensah served his country well.
