Mad Men. Furious Women<\/a>\u2019 about misogyny in the ad business. It\u2019s a tough read, but if you haven\u2019t read it, you should.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI don\u2019t know Zoe but to write about what happened to her must have taken extraordinary strength and courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s empowered others to come forward with similar stories. And she has had to put up with the inevitable pile-ons from those trying to make light of what happened to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s true that almost every woman I\u2019ve ever met in our industry has similar stories. I\u2019ve not come across one as dreadful as Zoe\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those from my era were and are too prepared to shrug these things off. They saw it as an inevitable consequence of the \u2018all lads together and sometimes we go a bit mad\u2019 culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How dare we. It was not OK; it is not OK and if it takes the terrible extremes of Zoe\u2019s and others\u2019 stories to make the industry face up to this and do something then it\u2019s about time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe \u2018Campaign\u2019 could help by keeping this story front and centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a culture that still, even today often seems to put our industry\u2019s priorities as constantly glorifying the extravagant (boasting about the hours worked, the alcohol consumed) ahead of celebrating the business benefits that great work brings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The extravagancies conflict with several uncomfortable facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we all know, right now consumers don\u2019t like ads much, and those they like least, appear on the fastest growing (in ad revenue terms) media forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear we seem to be saying let\u2019s do more of something consumers don\u2019t like, as they seem not to like it in sufficient numbers to hit some fanciful audience target that has little to do with any business outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One way to express dislike of something is not to consume much of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet we\u2019ve convinced ourselves, via the modern equivalent of snake oil that an ad exposed for 2 seconds is worth even discussing in the same breath as an experience that lasts maybe 15 times as long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then we\u2019ve fallen for the trick that has likes and shares as worthy objectives even though study after study concludes that alone they contribute zip to any positive brand building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We shake our heads about the paucity of great journalism, but then act as if we play no part in the fact that today journalists are judged not by the impact their stories have on society but by how many clicks they generate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What if we all made clear to media vendors that we care diddly for clicks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, we think it\u2019s OK to support platforms that allow abuse of those whose opinion leads them to speak up against our own favourite but unsubstantiated theories. Even when the facts show we\u2019re wrong. Abuse equals likes and clicks. So that\u2019s alright then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why is this OK? Why do we keep supporting the channels that host these lies and abuses? What if the ad business pressed Twitter to only allow accounts with an identifiable owner? Isn\u2019t accountability a good thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear I am not in favour of boycotting legitimate channels that express a different point-of-view to my own. Advertisers should be free to advertise wherever they like; our job is to make sure their decisions are well-informed based on whatever knowledge and experience we may have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it\u2019s appropriate to point to context, then so be it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abdicating from that responsibility, ignoring the signs we\u2019re being sent from consumers that certain elements of what we do are not appreciated and thus don\u2019t work, is not indicative of an industry at ease with itself. That knows what it\u2019s doing and appreciates its true worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zoe Scaman appears to be an immensely brave and principled woman but she shouldn\u2019t have needed to prove that. The men who abused her behaved obnoxiously displaying an arrogance, a failure to think of anyone except themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happened to her and to many others is of course at a level far, far above moaning on about a few media numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what is concerning is that the selfish behaviour Zoe exposes is mirrored, even if only in shadowy outline as opposed to in harsh high definition in so many areas that we touch that we should all take heed and ask ourselves how we can make things better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if all most of us can do is (compared to Zoe) minimal and at the margins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The more I look around, the more I read our trades, the more research I see the more I come to the conclusion that the ad business is not an industry at ease with itself. Doing strange things. Making decisions based solely on media metrics. Ignoring the biggest issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}