Season 9, Episode 7 August 18, 2024

On this episode, we’ll hear about a small, not-for-profit organization that steered billions of dollars in advertising away from where you might be looking.  I’ll chat with a man about outrage and the media’s role in promoting it.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  On this episode, we’ll hear about a small, not-for-profit organization that steered billions of dollars in advertising away from where you might be looking, and, I’ll chat with a man about outrage and the media’s role in promoting it….but first, (Not the Headlines!)

Unless you work in the media business, on the advertising side of it, anyway, you’re probably not familiar with an organization called the World Federation of Advertisers.  And it’s just as well.  They help companies that want to market their wares using data and other factors to influence spending on products and services.  They’re also a non-profit, so on the surface, it seems like a nice organization.  And just in case what they were already doing wasn’t enough for some, they also started a new non-profit called the Global Alliance for Responsible Marketing, or GARM. 
GARM’s mission, according to the World Economic Forum, is to address things like on-line hate speech, bulllying, disinformation, use of personal data, and child exploitation.  Those last two objectives never seemed to get as much attention as the first three.  One of the ways they hoped to achieve the mission was to help advertisers recognize the role that they could play in “pushing to improve the safety of online environments.” The description went on to say that, “Together (meaning GARM and advertisers), they are collaborating with publishers and platforms to do more to address harmful and misleading media environments; and to develop and deliver against a concrete set of actions, processes and protocols for protecting brands.”  Again, on the surface, it seems like a worthy accomplishment if they can pull it off.  But if you examine it a little more closely, you have to ask yourself some questions.  Like ‘what do they mean by collaborating? Do more to address? And who gets to decide if content is harmful or misleading?  Well, to answer that last question...they do.  The Global Alliance for Responsible Marketing.  Once they decided what was harmful and disinformation, the collaboration came in.  But it wasn’t exactly a collaboration.  It was more like a list of demands put upon digital platforms.  If the demands weren’t met, GARM members would likely put their advertising dollars somewhere else.  That’s how they “addressed” the issue of what they considered harmful or misleading content.  Those were the processes and protocols for protecting brands.  As if a brand needs to be protected.  The whole premise of GARM is disinformation, to be honest.  
It began when somebody saw an ad for a product next to a post on social media that they found offensive.  First of all, the ad was placed there in a fraction of a second after the webpage opened, and had very little or nothing to do with the content of the post.  But somebody found a cause they could use to threaten companies.  Just get a screenshot of a Johnson & Johnson ad next to a post about Nazi’s, and you can threaten the company with a boycott by associating the company with Nazis.  Now, if you’re a company that buys and sells World War II memorabilia, you might be okay with that.  But if your company makes bagels, maybe not.  So there was a need for a business to have more control over where it’s ads would be placed, even though digital advertising is already very well targeted.  That can be either a blessing or a curse depending upon what kind of company you have.  But how can a company make sure it’s ads don’t end up next to objectionable content?  You can’t.  Especially when it comes to social media, because the platform may have liberal rules about speech.  And when I say liberal, I don’t mean in the political sense, but in the sense that they have less restrictions.
As it turns out, the platforms with the most liberal speech rules were the ones the liberals had the most problems with.  And it was the political left that had control over GARM.  The result was that most of what was considered harmful or misleading speech was conservative speech.  That led to billions of dollars in advertising being reallocated to less conservative media.  It didn’t matter who had the most listeners or viewers, or who the target audience was.  All in the name of protecting the brand.  Michael Jordan once famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”  GARM forgot that simple rule of marketing.  Many of the larges companies in the world were tricked into investing in media outlets that towed the left-wing political line of messaging.  All while depriving conservative media in billions of dollars in advertising services.  Were these companies tricked or were they coerced?  Sure, some were probably willing co-conspirators.  The same companies that were quick to develop DEI departments.  Willing or not, these companies were pulled away from marketing to huge swaths of the population all in the name of progressive politics.  These companies were paying billions of dollars a year, yet were told to keep their ads away from websites that might have words we don’t like.  It’s the only way GARM could accomplish their mission.  If the platform won’t conform to GARM’s so-called safety standards, then they lose the advertising.
In GARM’s defense, they maintain that the final say in advertising decisions rests with the individual advertiser, and they don’t control where the money goes.  Alright.  I guess they’re allowed to say that.  But when it’s a non-profit consortium of companies like Adidas, British Petroleum, General Mills, Kellogg, Sony, Pepsi, Chanel, Nestle and NBC, and dozens more who call themselves members, and they fall in line with each other, it becomes more than protecting the brands, GARM becomes the brand itself.  So much so that the United States government began investigating GARM for anti-trust violations, and Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against the organization.  The House Judiciary Committee claims GARM likely broke the law to silence conservative viewpoints by starving disfavored content or advertising dollars.  Billions of advertising dollars.  https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/garm-exposed-house-judiciary-report-says-ad-coalition-likely-broke-law-silence.  The report states outright, “Colluding to suppress voices and views disfavored by the leading marketers at the world’s largest companies and advertising agencies is core to GARM’s founding principles.”
The report promted Elon Musk to file a lawsuit against GARM, accusing the non-profit of colluding to create an advertising boycott of X.  The boycott began after Musk bought Twitter, leading to substantial drops in advertising revenue because the organization now believed the platform now know as X had become a dangerous place for advertisers to reach potential customers.  What GARM failed to mention was that it was GARM itself that was making advertising platforms dangerous, if they were.  It was GARM who looked for reasons to pull advertising based on the content of the platform.  If GARM wasn’t pointing it out, none of the advertisers would have even noticed, and they would have been advertising to all kinds of people, not just those who hold the same liberal beliefs.  GARM used its influence to protect liberal thought and eliminate conservative thought.
I would say that GARM lost its way after being founded and turned into some accidental radical group, but the truth is, it was always meant to be exactly what it was.
With the House Judiciary Committee investigation and the lawsuit brought by Elon Musk, GARM has closed its doors for good.  Claiming that it doesn’t have the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle, the whole place just folded.  Even though it had the backing of many of the world’s larges companies and held sway over a trillion dollars in advertising a year, it claimed it couldn’t afford to fight for itself.   The group issued a statement to CNN that says, “GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances.  GARM therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue its activities.”  What really happened is that the cat was out of the bag, and GARM, as well as it’s parent, the World Federation of Advertisers, knew the jig was up.  They had no choice but to shutter the operation, as it could no longer get away with cheating the public out of pertinent information and conservative businesses out of advertising dollars.  
Maybe there are companies who only want to advertise to liberal customers.  That’s fine.  Demographics are a leading tool in determining where to put advertising dollars.  You want to make sure you’re speaking to the right audience.  But GARM’s mission was just a cover.  Even GARM itself said only 6.1 percent of all ads were place next to what they considered illegal or harmful content in 2020.  Now they’ll have to defend that mission in civil court.  The only argument they have going for them is that they no longer exist.

Phone and Email liner

My guess today is a man who’s been seeking advice from experts on the role the media, the internet, and how we consume information has led to stark contrasts in ideology, and how we’re effected by it.  His name is David Beckemeyer, and he host a podcast called Outrage Overload, which examines the issues that cause said outrage and why.  David has compiled a keen insight on the subject, and he was kind enough to chat with me about it from his California home...

Interview


So, outrage is good, but not if you’re always outraged.  And put that outrage to good use where you can, and let go of it where you can’t.  But perhaps most important, be selective about your outrage, otherwise, you may be consumed by it.  Thank you to David Beckemeyer for spending some time in the Listening Tube.  If you’d like to dig deeper into the outrage industry, the podcast is called Outrage Overload.   https://outrageoverload.net/outrage-overload-podcast/  Get it where every you get your podcasts.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Thank you for putting yer ear to the Listening Tube.  Subscribe today, or text me from the homepage!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.