Morality and media – does the combination exist?
Now that the dust has settled, Mumbrella’s Calum Jaspan questions if advertisers’ walk is matching the talk, and the ongoing risk for brands playing in divisive media environments.
The opinion of one of the industry’s more well-known names turned a few heads on the site last week.
We covered it on the podcast, but I think the topic deserves another look now that it has had a bit of time to simmer.
“The media bullying of Higgins is getting to a point advertisers are going to need to reassess their role in funding and enabling this sort of bullying. Horrible stuff,” Dentsu’s chief investment officer Ben Shepherd wrote on LinkedIn.
“We’re not the judge and jury,” one agency boss said to me on the topic since. “We’re employed to advertise and get an audience.”
“Our opinion is only relevant if the client agrees,” they continued, suggesting there would be chaos if media buying was based on political stances.”
Amazing. Factually incorrect, derelict of responsibility and completely uninspired. From an agency boss? How surprising.
It’s the media agency’s job to provide eyeballs for an ad, correct, but agencies also need to provide advice to clients on where they should run not solely informed by the potential total audience. Clients want advice on 1) how the environment they’re advertising in best suits and enhances the brand/message/specific ad, and 2) brand safety. This is a fundamental core of media strategy.
The clients want their agency’s advice and guidance, and that involves taking a position not based on 000’s. In my personal experience as the relatively junior investor who ultimately had a big say in where multiple $50M+ clients put their money, I felt empowered and required to provide an opinion on what talent was a good fit and who to avoid, and what channels and platforms would leave them open to the dreaded complaints from the public. I kept on my desk an inch high stack of complaint letters from a Christian group when my client’s mainstream brand had a bonus spot run in the Californication launch to scare/train newbies. Remember conservatives complain as much as progressives.
Also, in the hundreds of times we ran the maths, you could get a comparative audience leaving out shock jocks and radical platforms.
If I was a marketer and found out my agency said “our opinion only matters if you agree with us” I’d be pretty disappointed. What expertise am paying for? Having a political opinion on where ads should run won’t lead to “chaos” any more than arbitrary share deals, matey relationships and Christmas hams do.
My alternate opinion to agency teams; don’t wait for a position to come from your business. Put a measured and smart opinion in front of your clients, and they’ll love you for it.
Moral/political objection to news is NOT a brand safety. End of story.
Bravo Calum. And go to hell anyone who disagrees with you. Burn them at the stake!