Follow the Money Laura Ingraham

Follow the Money Laura Ingraham

Advertising dollars speak load.  It’s what makes the media world go around.  I know this personally having been the Worldwide Media Director for Hewlett Packard.  At HP, I was managing a $500M media budget.  Yep, that’s millions.  A huge number which I was privileged to manage and create some of the most memorable campaigns along with my fellow colleagues and agency partners.

Bring in Laura Ingram the Fox News host who recently made a ludicrous comment about 17 year old David Hogg a Parkland, FL student who survived the vicious mass murder shooting in Florida.  The result of that tweet has led to 8 advertisers to drop her show, an apology from Ingraham and the quick announcement that she had a pre-planned vacation scheduled and would be gone a week.

And the move by those advertisers didn’t surprise me at all.  Here’s a few things most smart Media Directors live by.   

The first, where you advertise has a direct reflection on the brand and values of the company.  That’s not to say controversy is unacceptable – in fact nearly all shows these days are.  But, there’s controversy and literal stupidity. 

The second rule of media buying.  How much stomach acid do you want to have when someone says something stupid or ignorant and it does not reflect your brand?  I can tell you that the majority of Media Directors don’t have enough antacid to stand the ground for a particular show. 

Now, the third rule of media.  One show doesn’t make a media schedule.  It’s easy to drop a show or network and move the money.  It takes one phone call.

And finally, the fourth rule of media.  Money talks.  When advertisers drop you and the money train is leaving without you on it, it’s amazing how fast an apology comes or condemnation from a network.

You might believe Laura Ingraham was in the right or that it’s wrong the advertisers dropped her show. That’s your opinion.  However, it doesn’t negate the fact that TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Hulu, Nutrish, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Atlantis Paradise Island and Stitch Fix bailed.  And I’ll bet you money they don’t come back to her show to advertise in the future.   

Money talks folks, bullsh*t walks.

Scott

Where’s Waldo? AKA Mark Zuckerberg

In a recent post, I spoke about the upcoming European Union GDPR legislation due to go into effect May 25th. It is a wide set of legislation which will have profound impact on businesses, marketers, channels, etc.

And then you have the disclosure that a political based consulting group had received and sold the data on over 50 million Facebook users. Think about it… 50 million people across the globe have lost control of their private data. That causes challenges with Facebook's ability to meet the requirements of GDPR which is just weeks away from implementation.

But remember, last summer there were discussions of Facebook's privacy management, which called out multiple concerns. So the questions about Facebook's privacy have already been in question.

Now, enter in Mark Zuckerberg… wait, nope Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t entered the conversation. Until about an hour ago no one knew when he’s address the problem. It sounds like he’ll discuss it today. Although a significant problem for Facebook, privacy challenges are nothing new – from credit card data theft, to the loss of personal data at major credit scoring agencies. 

What is concerning is that leadership is tested when major issues and problems occur. Unfortunately, Facebook’s lack of response has been disappointing. An opportunity to be a leader in the privacy space has passed and Facebook is now a follower not a leader.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the coming weeks.

Scott