Anonymous group of senior ad industry leaders warns of industry-wide moral failing
An anonymous group of senior advertising professionals, composed of individuals who claim to have held or currently hold roles at creative, adtech, and media agencies, has released a memo warning that the industry is failing in its moral and civic duties to society.
The memo, viewed by The Media Leader, says that without an interruption to the status quo, the advertising industry will:
* “Be a critical enabler to the tech platforms that stoke hatred and division.”
* “Facilitate hate groups to monetise their content at a time of increasing division in this country and many others.”
* “Support the social license of the fossil fuel industry and provide broader greenwashing and social-washing services to industries that are under public scrutiny.”
* “Roll over in the face of anti-DEI rhetoric and desert those individuals, teams and communities that our industry has made commitments to.”
The anonymous group said its members are “seeing a vacuum of responsible leadership” and “a hollowing out of the values we need to lean back on” as the media industry faces mass job losses in the wake of declining valuations at major agency holding groups and AI-driven efficiencies.
The memo also warns that British business interests are “losing independence” to US political interests.
“Our industry infrastructure of trade associations and industry bodies, press, major events and conventions, as well as senior leaders within major agencies, are all failing to make a material stand on any of the issues that would give our industry a moral justification for existing alongside a commercial one,” the memo continues.
Giving space
The group was convened last year under the banner of a non-profit, Inside Track.
Two members of the group, both senior professionals in the ad industry, confirmed to The Media Leader, on the condition of anonymity, that the group has “double figure” membership.
One said it was their belief that “our leaders aren’t leading, they’re just managing decline” and that “it feels like [the industry is] in an echo chamber”, divorced from public opinion on issues like climate change and hate speech.
Meanwhile, Ned Younger, the director of Inside Track, who speaks for the anonymous group, said the memo “shows the deep sense of frustration being felt by senior leaders in advertising” and that it calls for “a step change in the urgency and substance of discussions about advertising’s role in building toward a just transition”.
Younger continued: “They talk about having their time wasted in working groups that have no power to deliver change on the social and environmental issues agencies claim to prioritise. They talk about an industry being gutted by companies using AI, with conversations about meaningful reinvention being stymied as the UK ad industry is being sold for parts.”
In private conversations, senior agency leaders often express opinions similar to those raised by the group. In off-the-record conversations with The Media Leader, several such persons have expressed personal struggles with working for organisations that financially promote or support ends at odds with their personal beliefs, including concerns about climate change.
Retirees are more likely to speak out against the negative externalities the advertising industry contributes to. Last year’s Advertising: Who Cares initiative, developed by Manning-Gottleib OMD founder Nick Manning and BJ&A and Crater Lake founder Brian Jacobs, sought to tackle similar concerns in a public forum.
Leaders at media owners have sounded the alarm more regularly, particularly those from organisations actively competing with tech platforms for ad budgets. Such arguments have been framed in both moral and business terms by citing effectiveness measurement and making ethical pleas.
In November, for example, the commercial chiefs at ITV, Sky and Channel 4 asked for advertisers to “turn down the toxic” by disinvesting from platforms they perceive as socially harmful. Bauer Media Advertising managing director Simon Kilby has likewise consistently criticised social media platforms for harming users’ mental health, and has similarly implored advertisers to “put their wallets where their heart is”.
The aim of the Inside Track memo, the group writes, is to give “more space” for individuals of moral character within the industry they know are already “doing their best to raise these issues”.
Richard Wielechwoski, senior investment analyst at Planet Tracker, a non-profit think tank focused on sustainable finance, warned that the issues raised by the memo “highlight a clear material risk” for advertising organisations.
“As a service industry, staff dominate the cost base for the ad agencies,” he explained. “Our research highlights that if agencies fail to address environmental or social concerns linked to their activities or clients, higher staff churn could materially impact revenues, costs and long-term profitability.”
Root causes
The group diagnoses the reasons for “how we got here” as a combination of leaders using “delay and derail tactics when faced with transformational alternatives” and a “deference to incremental rather than transformational action”.
They note that leadership and trade associations “too often push back on, drag their heels, or quietly undermine work which would actually change our trajectory”.
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The memo reads: “Industry-wide forums on sustainability, DEI or digital safety that are in theory open for everyone to participate in end up paying little more than lip service to solving critical issues.
“The dominant working group model is a great way of containing debate. It keeps people busy by providing space for talk without power for action.”
The problem is compounded, the group argues, by “the presence of Big Tech companies in industry-wide meetings and initiatives, whose approach is limited to reducing their negative impact rather than preventing digital harms”.
They continue: “Big Tech players don’t really care about the issues being discussed, but instead come to stall progress and advocate for their own interests.”
Meanwhile, the group alleges that agencies themselves have, when asked to consider their culpability in inaction on tackling harms, wrongly hidden behind reasoning such as “client choice” and “avoiding legal risk”. This has allowed agencies to continue “enabling the fossil fuel industry or reducing advertising spend on extremist sites and content”.
The group additionally criticised trade publishers, arguing bold journalists are “having their wings clipped” by editors and that industry events “have some content related to critical issues but never bring them to the fore”.
What’s next?
The memo’s explicit call to action is to convene “an honest conversation with industry’s power-holders who sit at the top levels of our agencies, who run our press and who run our trade and regulatory bodies”.
The release of the memo was timed to stoke discussion in the run up to the Advertising Association’s LEAD conference, which takes place in London on 5 February.
While the group intends to remain anonymous for now, its participants said they can be contacted by reaching out to Inside Track.
The memo concludes: “We believe that many of our leaders would welcome the space for a material conversation about what it would take for us to use our collective power and influence to help shape and support a transition to a more socially just and environmentally regenerative future.”
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