The Association of National Advertisers has introduced an educational program for businesses and consumers designed to help combat online hate speech.
The program will include more than 36 original video education modules and an expansive and vetted resource library.
It teaches how to combat online hate, such as how to report hate speech on various major digital platforms and how to “diffuse online hate content with counter speech”.
The modules will be available in both English and Spanish and will include closed-captioning.
The program was built collaboratively with online platforms and produced by the Brand Safety Institute.
Ann Mukherjee, Chairman-CEO of Pernod Ricard North America and chair of the #EngageResponsibly initiative, added: “Businesses have an influential role to play in combating hate speech and fostering an online environment where consumers feel safe to engage. This new education program will have a tremendous ripple effect across the business community, and we look forward to the evolution of the platform.”
The program will be “housed within a new website” as the ANA collaborates with the Better Business Bureau to scale and pilot the program with small- and medium-sized businesses in advance of an official campaign spearheaded by Ogilvy to be launched later this year.
The program is part of the ANA’s #EngageResponsibly initiative, which aims to drastically reduce online hate speech by 2025.
The initiative is in partnership with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and supported by the ANA Alliance for Inclusive and Mulitcultural Marketing (AIMM), Brand Safety Institute, Ogilvy, and Pernod Ricard, the latter of whom founded, seeded, and donated the initiative to the ANA to achieve scale.
Rob Rakowitz, initiative lead at GARM, added: “Combatting online hate speech requires an all-in approach at the community level. #EngageResponsibly helps take a lot of the work GARM and its member organizations do at a global level and helps to make it more accessible to key pillars of local communities – small businesses and their marketers. It’s been encouraging to see many of our members collaborate on this effort over time, making it easier to combat online hate.”
Further partners of #EngageResponsibly include Meta, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap.
