AGE OF RAGE
Social-media activists demand big brands take sides on society’s most divisive issues,
In this age of rage, Madison Avenue is finding itself on red alert.
Advertisers are increasingly in the crosshairs of populist activists — aided by the power and reach of social media — who are demanding that brands quickly take sides on divisive social and political issues, posing a new challenge to corporations that usually prefer to stay out of the fray.
After a groundswell of online anger over reports that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had settled with at least five women who accused him of harassment, more than 50 companies pulled their ads from O’Reilly’s popular prime-time program. The exodus followed similar campaigns to pressure brands with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, such as L.L. Bean, Uber and advertisers on The New Celebrity Apprentice. “Americans are now demanding that their brands articulate their values and weigh in on political issues, and I think the degree to which they are expecting that is really quite new,” said Kara Alaimo, who teaches public relations at Hofstra University and worked in communications. “What social media is doing is forcing companies to make these decisions much more rapidly.”
Ad boycotts are not new: provocateurs such as Don Imus and Glenn Beck lost their cable news soapboxes in part because an angry public used petitions and letter-writing campaigns to force companies to drop their sponsorship.
But the pile-on culture of social media has accelerated the process such that corporations may find themselves besieged within hours by tens of thousands of online critics.
Last week, Pepsi was excoriated for a tone-deaf commercial that invoked the imagery of populist protest to sell soft drinks. A Twitter post from the Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., that mocked Pepsi was reposted more than 140,000 times. Within roughly 24 hours of the release of the ad, Pepsi pulled it and apologized.
The speed of this cycle has tested even the best-prepared marketing giants, creating a niche for public relations specialists who say they can help companies navigate these instant social-media storms.
One firm offers software and training sessions that simulate “a realtime online attack” on a brand — the corporate equivalent of war games.
The boycotts may give brief satisfaction to social-media activists. But many of the sponsors that turned away from O’Reilly this week are still advertising on Fox News, which reaches the biggest audience on cable television. Fox says it is working with sponsors to address any concerns about The O’Reilly Factor. And specialists say there will be little to no financial impact on the network in the near future, though that could change over time.
Brian Wieser, a media analyst at Pivotal Research, said that for now, Fox News was essentially just shuffling inventory — “not unlike if you run a store and have got to figure out what shelf on which you put different products.” In the short term, the fallout could eat into revenue for The O’Reilly Factor as cheaper commercials replace big-spending brands, Wieser said, while the longer-term worry is that advertisers could reassess the annual budgets they spend on Fox News.
But social media is also a handy conduit for people to register their anger with brands — directly and en masse.
“The intensity of this is a lot greater,” said Matthew Hiltzik, a former Democratic consultant who draws on his experience in political campaigns to advise corporate clients. “Companies need to invest time and resources in developing proactive strategies that advance and protect the brand, so that they are best prepared to deal with the unexpected.”
Weber Shandwick, a public relations firm, created a simulation soft- ware and training tool called “Firebell” in 2010 to prepare clients for social-media maelstroms. Its website describes a new strain of crisis “made up of a string of critical nanomoments,” which can “gain momentum and mass at inferno-speed.” Firebell, introduced as one facet of responding to a crisis, is now central to the firm’s crisis management training, a spokesperson said.
The pressure represents some whiplash for an industry that had broadly moved away from relying on content as a rough proxy for groups of people, focusing instead on targeting online ads and, to a lesser extent, television ads, by audience size, browsing habits and other user characteristics.
Orkin, a pest-control company that removed its ads from The O’Reilly Factor, does not buy ads on specific shows but instead purchases “broad day parts on networks that reach our target audience,” spokesperson Martha Craft said. The company added O’Reilly’s show to a “Do Not Buy” list after learning of the allegations against him, she said. This year, consumers pushed brands to distance themselves from The New Celebrity Apprentice because Trump remained an executive producer of the show. That effort stemmed f rom #GrabYourWallet, a grassroots social-media campaign that urges boycotts of companies selling Trumprelated products.
“We haven’t seen brands almost treated as individuals in this way before, and expected to espouse political beliefs and uphold them consistently across platforms in everything they do,” Alaimo said.
Many companies are still figuring out how to cope with these situations, she said, adding that it was crucial to respond during “the golden hour of crisis.” The term refers to the “golden hour” in emergency medicine — the window after a traumatic injury in which treatment is most likely to stave off death or permanent damage.