{"id":869,"date":"2017-01-19T10:13:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T10:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=869"},"modified":"2017-01-19T10:13:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T10:13:54","slug":"using-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/using-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week\u2019s Cog Blog<\/a> post expressed the hope that facts, and fact-based opinion would rebound in 2017. We need to banish the whole notion of fake news \u2013 a phrase that is already becoming the catch-all defence used by politicians to deflect questions they don\u2019t wish to answer.<\/p>\n

Advertisers and their agencies have an important role to play in this. A Twitter-based movement (Sleeping Giants) is already showing what can be done to \u2018encourage\u2019 advertisers to boycott sites like Breitbart.<\/p>\n

This is obviously a tricky area. Where does freedom of speech stop and spreading of hate start?<\/p>\n

When is an advertiser justified in using his dollars to influence, however indirectly an editorial policy?<\/p>\n

Clearly any advertiser can decide where to spend budget. If he decides against any particular site (or indeed publication or TV show) on the basis of content then that is subtly different from using financial clout to drive a particular editorial agenda.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago Rob Norman of GroupM published a good piece<\/a> on LinkedIn. One of Rob\u2019s action points in combating fake news concerns the funding of what he (rightly) calls \u2018real journalism:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funding model for real journalism and the pursuit of truth need to be seen as a collective responsibility. It’s quite possible that the underlying problem with fake news is the declining resources available to fund real news.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rob\u2019s point on collective responsibility is well made.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time that advertisers valued values and didn\u2019t simply see media forms as a way of getting to loads of eyeballs, regardless of how.<\/p>\n

Valuing values almost certainly has a price, but surely the price is worth paying if one result is the safeguarding of \u2018real journalism\u2019 (which helps with advertiser benefits such as \u2018attention\u2019 and \u2018engagement\u2019)?<\/p>\n

The agencies must play their part too. It\u2019s easy to talk a client out of paying more, but a narrow focus on reach risks some ads appearing where those paying for them would rather they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We all know that traders will baulk at any planning decision that upsets their agency deals, or indeed their algorithmic processes<\/a> (thanks to Digiday UK).<\/p>\n

But as we\u2019ve said here many times, plans need to drive buys not the other way around.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time agencies acted on their stated aim being to benefit the advertiser, and move on from having traders lead planners by the nose.<\/p>\n

It would be positive if Rob\u2019s piece evolved into an actioned policy implemented throughout his agencies.<\/p>\n

Rob does point out that his LI published views are personal. Yet he is certainly a major driver of GroupM policy.<\/p>\n

But personal or not, what better way for GroupM to lead by seizing the high ground? Building on their verification work to truly consider editorial context in both plans and buys would make for a hopeful start to 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u2019s Cog Blog post expressed the hope that facts, and fact-based opinion would rebound in 2017. We need to banish the whole notion of fake news \u2013 a phrase that is already becoming the catch-all defence used by politicians to deflect questions they don\u2019t wish to answer.<\/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\/869"}],"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=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}