Droga5 claims VB manages controversial Facebook page itself despite brand blaming agency
VB and its former agency Droga5 are locked in a blame game over who was responsible for managing the brand’s Facebook page which fell foul of the ad watchdog over sexist and homophobic comments.
This week it was revealed that the Advertising Standards Board had ruled that brands are responsible for comments made by fans on a Facebook page.
VB’s parent company Foster’s parted ways with Droga5 in February when it consolidated its roster with Clemenger BBDO Melbourne picking up the extra business.
In its response to the ASB, Foster’s appeared to blame Droga5 for comments remaining on the page that should have been taken down. Without using the agency’s name, it said:
“We would like to acknowledge that a number of the comments posted by fans of the VB Facebook page were clearly inappropriate. And we are disappointed that they were not removed through the review process we had in place.
“We wanted to take this opportunity to explain that whilst these user comments had remained on our VB Facebook page (for varying lengths of time), this was due to the fact that some had been missed in the monitoring process. We have discussed this complaint with the agency (who previously managed the VB Facebook page) in order to understand how this happened and found that despite ongoing monitoring some of the comments had “slipped through” and then unfortunately were not picked up later.”
However, Droga5 claims that VB has always managed its Facebook page internally. In a statement to Mumbrella, Droga5 said:
“Droga5 never managed the social media pages. The VB Facebook was always, and still is, handled by the client directly.”
Mumbrella asked VB to clarify whether Droga5’s comment is correct – and if so, why the ASB was told that the agency was at fault. The brand issued a statement saying: “”CUB takes full responsibility for the actions. We’re disappointed that the process broke down but we have to take responsibility for our own Facebook page. We’re not going to confirm which agency was involved as we have to take final responsibility.”
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Blaming the old agency is so easy… like looking at the family dog when dad farts.
But not such a great strategy for CUB. Mumbrella asked a straight forward question and got a convoluted reply… effectively, “umm… ok it may not have been that dog, but we have other dogs… ummm I’ll open the window”
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