News Ltd: Weet-Bix pulled their ads because of Cahill story
News Ltd says it was “punished” by Socceroo sponsor Sanitarium pullings its Weet-Bix ads after the Sunday Telegraph reported on a night club incident involving Tim Cahill.
Last week the News Ltd title reported a late night incident at The Piano Room in Sydney’s Kings Cross involving an altercation between Cahill’s group on the security staff.
Despite the controversy, Cahill scored both the goals in Australia’s two-one win over Japan in the world cup qualifier. As a result, Weet-Box produced a full page ad saying “Course he had his Weet-bix”
But it didn’t run in the Daily Telegraph.
The move appears to have triggered a war between News Ltd and the brand, with an identical article running in The Weekend Australian on Saturday and then in the Sunday Telegraph.
According to the piece: “On Thursday the Seventh Day Adventist-owned Sanitarium pulled its advertising from NSW newspapers to protest about stories they published on Cahill’s drinking. It also pulled advertisements from (The)Sunday Telegraph.”
The item concluded:
“On the same day the bouncer was in The Telegraph, Sanitarium ran a series of full-page advertisements in the major metropolitan papers around Australia featuring Cahill with the slogan across the bottom “Course he had his Weet-Bix”. The advertisements ran in News Limited papers in Melbourne and Queensland but not in NSW where the business went to Fairfax.
“In Sydney News owns The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, Fairfax owns the Sun-Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald. Clearly the Sydney papers were being punished by Sanitarium, which could not be contacted yesterday afternoon because the Seventh Day Adventist owners do not work on Friday afternoons.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Well done Sanitarium. Stick by your guns and withhold your ad dollars for the rest of the year.
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Have any NRL sponsors been seen in the pages of Australian media this year? Hopefully this isn’t a bigger can of worms around advertisers looking to control editorial content…
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Pistola, you have to be kidding? Roger has hit the nail on the head: this appears to be an attempt to control editorial content. It’s shameless bullying by Sanitarium. This situation completely destroys the brands credibility for me.
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Thats hilarious.
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The paper went forth with a story that was not accurate. All they had to do before getting themselves into this mess was to coraborate the story with the owner of the establishment in question. After doing that then would have realised that their source was not being completely truthful… However in Australia it seems the motto is report first ask questions later.
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We need some action to reel-in certain sectors of our media. The Daily & Sunday Telegraph are sinking lower and lower in their attempts to attract readers to their ailing newsprint. Any reasonable person reading the original copy would have seen right through their ‘scuttlebuck’ – innuendo and hearsay from beginning to end, yet they continued to try to ‘justify’ their copy even when facts kept ‘getting in their way’.
Australian Football (soccer) has long had a ‘squeeky-clean’ reputation as opposed to the regular controversies in the other codes viz, AFL, NRL and Rugby. Seems News Ltd felt it was time to aim some crap at them.
Similar pressure as Sanitarium exerted was put to bear on the NRL by the elite public schools, who threatened to withdraw their support for rugby league in their schools, over the Matthew Johns affair.
Pressure by external bodies, does have an effect on the big boys of commerce and entertainment, to keep them honest and reputable.
Good on ya’ Sanitarium! I’ll have a Weet-Bix tomorrow!, as my way of saying “Thanks!”
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Do they want to sell cereal or control everyone’s behaviour?
Frankly, I believe most sponsorships are a waste of money, but if a company believes in the concept then they should stick to it for the purpose of sales and not bother to get overly self-righteous.
If the athletes and teams aren’t SDA, then don’t expect them to act like SDA’s. Most SDA’s don’t meet their own standards because the standards are absurd and based in fallacy!
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Nice to see that someone out there is sticking up for Tim Cahill and the Socceroos!
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I don’t think Sanitarium’s action will change behaviour at the Daily Telegraph where this all started. We now know that the Daily Telegraph has published a fake email on the Utegate scandal, much like the fake email they dredged up in support of their intial Cahill muck piece. It’s the Telegraph brand that is being destroyed here. Considering Qantas, Nike, Westfields, Hyundai, Sony, Cadbury-Schweppes, NAB & Optus are all commerical partners of football – will they not take too kindly to Telegraph Executive Sports Editor Phil Rothfield linking unfavourable football (soccer) editorial content to the current revenue stream from rugby league advertising. Read his quote here;
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au.....ias-196111
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Why would Sanitarium run an ad featuring a national hero who they sponsor (Tim Cahill) in the same newspapers that attempt to tarnish his name with unjustifiable articles with no evidence what so ever. It doesn’t make good business sense to me.
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David’s comment is smack on. Sanitarium has leveraged its sponsorship of Cahill beautifully with their ads…and they are under no obligation whatsoever to run those ads in papers that stand to damage their investment with inaccurate reporting. I think William has missed the point. If Sanitarium was expecting athletes or teams to act like SDAs then they would have withdrawn their sponsorship from Cahill, rather than leverage it the way they have, although I do agree with his comment that most sponsorships are a waste of money. In this case, however, Sanitarium have shown how sponsorships if leveraged properly and integrated with their overall marcoms strategy can add value.
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I think you other tossers are confusing the point. They didn’t withdraw the ad to try to ‘influence editorial content’.. they withdrew the ad because they disagreed with the pathetic journalism which resulted in this over the top series of articles. The Tele should stick to writing articles about the large number of moronic rugby players running around… God knows they have plenty of incidents far more serious than Timmy’s event to report on, they were just looking to discredit the Socceroos.
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