Building an Affinity for Ethical Analytics

Politics was once a distant topic from the world of consumers and brands.  But 2016 proved to be a year when commercial practices and social beliefs collided. It’s up to marketers to use analytics where possible to determine how to protect brand integrity.

The election of Donald Trump has ignited sharp consumer activism.  Consumers are voicing brand preference based on whether or not they support the Trump administration. Marketers have only recently fully appreciated how empowered consumers can give voice to their experiences in social media.  That empowerment has morphed into deselecting brands in protest or support of political or social goals. 

Take Kellogg for example. The food brand announced that it would no longer advertise on Breitbart News, the alt-right political website formerly run by Steve Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump.  Critics have condemned Breitbart for featuring racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic content as news. and for publishing news based on unverified facts to advocate its main agenda.  The decision came after consumers alerted Kellogg to the presence of its ads on the Breitbart site. 

Such consumer alerts have been increasing, partly due to a Twitter account, Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants).  The account asks people who see an ad on Breitbart to take a screenshot and tweet a notification to the brand advertised, using the Sleeping Giants Twitter ID. The account then tracks the brand response to see whether it eliminates Breitbart from media buys. (Editor’s note: As far as we have been able to determine, the operators of the @slpng_giants Twitter account have so far remained anonymous.)

The Kellogg advertising withdrawal is a reflection of how the expanding use of programmatic ads can leave brands vulnerable when affinity is not monitored.  Although programmatic ads are designed to sophisticatedly target individuals, the methodology can result in instances where potential customers can compare their values against those of the publication where the ad appears.

For example, Adweek reports that ROI Influencer Media makes programmatic ads available to social media influencers.