Get Up goes after Woolworths for advertising with News Corp
Activist group Get Up is targeting one of Australia’s biggest brands, Woolworths, for spending money advertising with News Corp and “funding climate denial”.
Get Up said the Murdoch press is more reliant on advertising than ever before, noting this makes the media giant vulnerable with advertisers holding the power.
“Companies like Woolworths are terrified of damage to their brand – of anything that could scare off customers (like climate denial?) So imagine what our advertising blitz could do,” Get Up said. “If advertisers start to distance themselves, the Murdoch Press will be forced to change its editorial stance – or face financial penalty once and for all. It all starts with Woolworths, a company known to respond to public pressure.”
They should go after Harvey Norman, the biggest spender with Newscorp.
You are in the wrong industry
Its utterly ridiculous that people would even entertain listening to this far left activist group. I work for a major brand and will certainly not be cutting back my spend with News based on the protests of the ‘woke brigade’
So you don’t believe in free speech? You’re free to ignore them but that doesn’t mean you’re right. Your customers will decide, not you.
Rick, doesn’t free speech also apply to clients choosing where they choose to invest, free from trolls?
You show your colours by the use of the word trolls.
No, free speech doesn’t include an advertiser enjoying freedom from criticism and in fact it implies exactly the opposite.
Labelling Getup as ‘far left’ is like saying Newscorp is a responsible publisher. Utterly bizarre statement to make.
GetUp! is anti-capitalism… how far-left can you get?
They may be ‘left wing activists’ but it is undeniable that your marketing dollars would be spent in brand safe environments.
News have scale, but guess what…. so do their competitors! And they arent overly polarising either. Outside of brand safety its also a perception thing… I mean, EVERYONE knows News is lame.
It’s exactly the opposite – what they say is the truth.
Have fun being on the wrong side of history.
So the major brand you work for isn’t pursuing the left wing market, that’s cool, selling four wheel drives or something right? Supermarkets of course are hoping they can sell to everyone, so they do mind if people of a certain political stripe don’t shop there.
This is getting out of control
What about Coles which sponsors MKR and the vaccine denier Pete Evans?
A lobbying organisation using free speech to make comment on a corporate relationship is hardly unique or the end of the world. It’s part of the free market all the right wing commentariat such as employed by News Corp love, is it not?
If this attempt to dictate editorial policy (purity?) had come from any other fact-averse cult, the gales of derision would be enormous. But because this exercise in extortion is in the name of ‘cloimet chinge’, they get a nod?
Get Up are deranged, extremist bullies and the worst kind of hypocrites
Thanks for clearing that up.
I didn’t realise that Get Up employees worked at The Telegraph and 2GB until just then.
Lol. “Extremist” lobbyists. Scary.
Again – we are giving these idiots oxygen. Mumbrella please keep to your agenda of relevant and interesting industry news, and let these losers get their space in their lunatic fringe social media space.
Agree! They have no credibility so not sure why people are pretending their opinion matters
This is nothing short of a protection racket built around a political argument. Perhaps we should stalk, hound and target the people who work for GetUp. Refuse to serve them or their families.
You’re getting mixed up between political activism (GetUp) and personal bullying and harrassment (threatening individuals and their families). Dangerous ignorance.
Maybe the ‘charity’ Get Up, start explaining to their volunteers how they manage to spend 7 million on wages every year rather than demonising a legitimate media organisation because they don’t like their political leaning.
What a strangely bizarre thing to say. Do you know how much the Murdoch’s pay themselves?
Group’s staff deserve a pay check!? Do you prefer slave Labour?
Weirdest comment on here!
News Limited is a profit enterprise, whereas Getup is not.
Getup advertises the fact that every dollar goes into their campaign. Well, sort of…
Want to know how much the directors of News Limited get paid, jump online, read the financial statements. Easy.
Want to know how much the non for profit directors at Getup get paid.. Um… Well…
GetUp are trolls.
Go woke, go broke.
“News Corp slammed the campaign, saying it is based on an “absolute untruth” and that its environmental credentials are “second-to-none”.
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Wow!
Talk about the message not matching the Action.
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Mixing Misinformation & the truth is not balance, it is a perversion of journalism.
News Corp commands ~70% of the newspaper readership. That’s a lot of eyeballs to abandon. Just because Getup says you should. (Simply because they don’t like an editorial position.)
Getup just seems to lurch from one clueless campaign to another.
At this point newspaper readership is a small and rapidly shrinking demographic, so its a low percentage of a low readership.
Weird comment.
The latest Ray Morgan research indicates that just under 16 million Australians read newspapers with in print or online on a regular basis.
Of the 16 million News Limited commands about 70 percent of those eyeballs.
That’s a lot of eyeballs!
Certainly total percentage of the population is different to say 20, 30, 40 years ago. But number of eyeballs and the cost (more competitive than ever) is an excellent way to advertise in Woolworths circumstances.
Really weird claim.
Claimed readership of 15.4 million (unders 14s excluded) In a nation of only 25.5 million people (under 14s included) raises some eyebrows wouldn’t you say?
You know better than a Ray Morgan research? Do tell about your research.
Can we just not with the strawman? Of course I’m not a research company, you could likely figure that out with your intuition, just like you could use your intuition to realise that that in a nation of 25.5 million (in which 47 percent of the population is functionially illiterate btw, google that one) claimed 15 million people reading newspapers is…..optimistic.
Mumbrella knows the IP addresses of these commentators.
I know someone at news corp who wanted to comment on this for the first time and it said “you are commenting too quickly, slow down”.
So rather than all of the employees come to the defence, let’s let the industry decide.
“From someone at News Corp”
…lets be honest, News employees never spring to the defence of their organisation on Mumbrella.
(maybe because they are secretly ashamed of working there)
That’s simply not the case.
By in large people are proud to work for the Guardian, Fairfax, Crikey, The Saturday Paper, Green Left Weekly and yes News Limited.
The idea of constantly defending the media company that employs you is needed, warranted or something you have to do on other website comment section is not something that would occupy the mind of employees. (Albeit some do passionately, the majority do not).
Not if they are using a VPN, which I suspect most journalist would! Not very helpful comment.
I guess Get-up needed to do something to deflect the impact of News Corp revealing pretty much all their luvvies donations go to paying their undisclosed wages. As activists they do a great job of banging a stick in a small, sad self-important swill bucket.
Just so we’re clear, you’re objecting to people being paid for their labour? And this is the article in News Corp papers (Deirdre Chambers what a coincidence!) that GetUp have already disputed?
And if they’re so small and sad and self-important, what are you upset about?
GetUp picks their targets. NewsCorp picks theirs. Pick a side if you want. Otherwise, who f*cken cares.
Best and most lucid comment on this thread.
Pretending to have balance by writing one article a month accepting that climate change is happening and maybe businesses need to adapt, mixed in with invitations to around x10 right wing climate change ignoring lobbyists on a weekly basis is NOT sitting on the ethical fence just because they are OPINION writers.
If all media buyers instead focused on other metrics instead of reach, maybe news corp wouldn’t keep trying to get so much reach with polarising articles on both sides of the fence.
It’s not just advertisers to blame, it’s the media industry rewarding News for making articles getting the most attention, factual or not.
A suggestion? Context and brand fit per article with surrounding media is a better metric. This is why the TV industry gets so much $$. Each show is a piece of context. You almost never get a list of pages that ads were on, that would be too much, but I’m sure there is contextual tech out there to make it humanly possible. Defund Andrew bolts articles and they will stop getting him on, not the whole company, it’s our fault.
Weird comment. Really weird.
Why would they ‘defund’ Andrew Bolt’s articles? He’s the most read columnist in Australia, drives a huge amount of traffic to the wider Herald Sun site, engagement, interaction and eyeballs on the website are exceptionally strong. That’s advertising gold right there.
P.S Nobody’s fault that there’s a wide range of views in the media, some views you may disagree with.
Some things need to be bipartisan. You can’t have balance for the sake of balance.
Replace the term Human Induced Climate Change, with The Illegality of Pedophilia and see how all the arguments about needing a wide range of opinions stack up.
Stop telling everyone that their comments are “weird” just because they are calling out NewsCorps bullshit. You’ve said it 5 times already.
You know what is weird? NewsCorp’s consistent inaccurate reporting (bushfires) and the fear mongering it irresponsibly promotes (covid19).
Your whole organisation is a blight on the world and should be dismantled.
Get up should check there own carbon footprint before criticizing any one else just check how much they spent on travel.
Protip: you can be a denier of science and still like shopping at woolies.
Woolies advertising isn’t an endorsement of News political agenda.
Not everything is polarised if we’re to accept such binary views of society.
Media in this market is as conservative as it comes, you’re going to have to run into more and more of such cases.
After being found to have spent $7.2 Million of $12 Million of donations on wages I guess they are just trying a bit of get even tactics.
I wouldn’t be caught dead reading a News Corp publication, but this GetUp campaign disgusts me. It’s not going to do too much to Woolworths, but if GetUp does this now what’s to stop them targeting small retailers who advertise in their local News Corp paper (which is likely to be the only newspaper in the region)? What happens when those small retailers go bankrupt because GetUp tells people to stop shopping there simply because they advertise with News Corp.
This sort of behaviour makes me inclined to support Morrison’s ban on activist boycotts. I never thought I’d say that. Nice own goal GetUp…
This is not the time to attack those who are feeding us and putting their lives on the line. Come on guys!
Of course all the major media corporations are running scared.
Social media and other online platforms will eventually do away with tabloids and all other forms of “traditional media outlets”
Think about how much money these “poor people” will lose no longer able to sell their politically motivated propaganda which is funded by greedy corporate multinationals.
What a joke.
GetUp are “activists” and “activists” are driven by their ideological goals, regardless of collateral damage.
Financially crippling News Corp probably won’t stop climate change. It will however cost a lot of jobs.
The Age and SMH are much, much more balanced in their presentation of many issues not just the environment
What? One sided climate change stories every day of the week with no debate.
Independent Always… What a laugh…