BotW: Sexist advertising is back, baby; Facebook can go on serving scam ads; The Unmade Index's rotten week
Welcome to Best of the Week, written in Evandale, Tasmania, after a blissful week of zero interstate travel.
Happy Scrabble Day, for those who rebetacle.
It’s been an odd few days where it’s felt as though most of the industry is simply waiting for next week. Monday’s coming verdict on the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial has loomed large; Seven West Media had an awful week with a new expenses scandal to add to its woes. I can’t remember a media story where every person I spoke to in the industry spontaneously raised it in the way they’ve been doing this week.
Angry, incoherent messages to various journalists (including myself) from more than one of the network’s departing executives has added to the sense of a network in denial, even to itself. And that’s before the verdict.
As one former Seven staffer put it to me: “They’ve got new daily programming: The shit show.”
However, until Justice Michael Lee starts speaking at the federal court in Sydney at 10.15 on Monday, none of us can know whether Seven, Ten, or neither of them, can claim justification for their actions over the last three years. Full of opinions on this one as I am, I’ll wait for the judge to have his say.
Today we’ll focus on Twiggy’s loss to Facebook and the advertising establishment’s problem with the long, unregulated tail.
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Don’t miss the HumAIn earlybird deadline
This week we revealed the program for HumAIn, our conference focusing on how AI will change marketing and media.
That’s all the information you need to decide whether to join us on May 28. The 20% earlybird discount expires on Tuesday, so now is the time to make up your mind.
Facebook can go on abetting the scammers
Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest lost his case against Facebook this week. Or, rather, the case was discontinued.
Forrest had been trying to force some consequence for the platform over the scam crypto ads featuring his likeness. Most people will know the type of ad - a message along the lines of “they tried to cut the live broadcast but by then it was too late”, along with a link to a fake news website.
The number of people sufficiently naive or vulnerable to fall for the scam is small, but there are enough of them to make it worth the crooks’ time, and some are losing their life savings.
It’s not just Facebook, I’ve seen plenty of similar ads run on mainstream sites via the Google advertising network too.
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that if the platforms tried harder, they could stop the ads. If an idiot like me can spot at a glance a scammy crypto ad, then generative AI should be more than capable.
It’s hard not to wonder how many millions of dollars the scammers pay to the platforms to deliver them.
When I see obviously scammy ads on Facebook, I’ve experimented with reporting them. Even that doesn’t seem to work.
Even more insidiously, if you report it, Facebook stops showing you the ad, even if it remains on the platform for everyone else. So the only people who don’t see it are the whistleblowers.
Twiggy lost. Maybe its time for the authorities to come after that advertising revenue under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Sexist ads are back, baby
Friday saw Ad Standards release its latest batch of complaint rulings.
Digging deeper than those featured in yesterday’s Ad Standards newsletter suggests a couple of trends. First, smaller, hard-to-regulate brands are still ignoring the regulations, and additionally many of them are turning back to using sex to sell.
Gym brand Reform Society was pinged for a billboard featuring a woman’s gluteal cleft (as Ad Standards delicately put it) .
Ad Standards ruled that the billboard carried a “confronting” level of nudity for an outdoor ad.
However, Reform Society didn’t respond to the Ad Standards investigation, which effectively means the end of the matter.
The same goes for lingerie chain Honey Birdette, which generated a whole new bunch of complaints, most of which were upheld as usual.
Again, Honey Birdette simply ignores the investigation when Ad Standards tries to make contact. Because the posters appear in the windows of Honey Birdette stores, Ad Standards is powerless to stop them.
Indeed, the theme of the latest batch of upheld complaints was sexualised and sexist messages from brands mostly outside the system.
Chatime - which also ignored the Ad Standards investigation - offered half price tea in an email promotion: “according to girl math that’s basically free”.
According to the Ad Standards ruling: “‘Girl math’ is used as a humorous way to rationalise seemingly intricate and often ridiculous ways women may try to justify to themselves an extravagant or unnecessary expense. The Panel considered that this suggestion is condescending and promotes a negative gender trope.”
But as Chatime controls its mailing list, there’s nothing Ad Standards can do to prevent the brand from sending that sort of message whenever it likes.
Yet another brand not returning the calls from Ad Standards (have they checked their emails are getting through the spam filters okay?) was SilkSilky sleepware. The slogan “a gift that makes her prettier” triggered the complaint, which was also upheld.
Then there was Wheels and Dollbaby, opting for a St Trinian’s schoolgirl theme for their underwear range, promoted on Facebook.
Did Wheels and Dollbaby respond to the Ad Standards investigation? By now you can probably guess the answer - no, it did not. So although the panel ruled the messaging contained “a predatory overtone”, the brand is free to go on doing what it does.
Indeed, one of the only brands that generated a complaint around sexuality in the most recent batch of rulings which actually took the trouble of replying was Southern Cross Austereo. They broadcast the following promo for the Jimmy & Nath Born Funny podcast at 6.30pm on Hit in Cairns:
“This radio advertisement featured guest Josh Thomas saying, ‘I think you’re underestimating how clean gay men's butt holes are, we’re not licking straight men's butt holes’.
“Nath replies to this saying, ‘yeah, some of the cleanest butt holes going around’ and Jimmy and Nath ask their producer Jarryd to give a ‘thumbs up’, to which Josh Thomas reacts, and then they all laugh together.”
SCA argued that the promo had a “mild-mannered, cheeky” tone and should be praised for being “accepting of LGBTQI relationships”. Somewhat optimistically, it also claimed of the 6.30pm broadcast “we do not consider this to be a time when children are likely to be listening.” The kids must go to bed early in Cairns.
Ruling against SCA, the Ad Standards panel said: “Most members of the community would not consider this level of sexual reference to be appropriate for a broad audience at any time.”
SCA aside, the lack of engagement with Ad Standards from a growing number of advertisers points to what will become a challenge for the self regulation system. The societal deal is that advertising industry is left alone to regulate itself. The Australian Association of National Advertisers sets the rules and the system is funded via a levy on ads.
The ultimate stick was the major media companies backing Ad Standards, so a repeat offender could eventually be locked out from advertising. But for smaller brands using platforms they control like email or their own sites, or platforms that don’t seem to care (like Facebook: see Twiggy), Ad Standards is impotent.
A two-speed ad regulation system is beginning to evolve - big, “respectable” advertisers who follow the rules, and, when they’re found to have breached them, take the ads down, sometimes with a grumble; and the long tail of smaller brands who do whatever they bloody well like.
In time, as that long tail gets longer, the legislators will show an interest. That will be a problem for the whole industry if it threatens self regulation.
Unmade Index extends lows to four sessions
The Unmade Index wrapped up a miserable week with a fall to a yet another all-time low on Thursday.
Yesterday our tracker of ASX listed media and marketing companies lost another 0.36%, to land on 550.6 points.
This represents a fall of 45% on the index since it opened on 1000 points at the beginning of 2022. It has also lost 12% since the start of this year.
Among the losers on Friday were Seven West Media which lost 2.56%, Nine which lost 0.62% and Ooh Media which lost 1.16%.
Audio stocks ARN Media and Southern Cross Austereo both improves slightly. It was also a good day at the small end of town with Vinyl Group and Aspermont both improving.
Last night was a rough one on the US markets - the Dow Jones lost 1.2%, Nasdaq 1.6% and the S&P 500 1.5%. That will likely set up another bumpy day on the ASX on Monday.
COTW: Become a winter person
In each edition of BOTW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
BMF is back with another instalment of 'The Off Season' for Tourism Tasmania, showcasing the harsh yet beautiful Tasmanian winter and encouraging tourists to explore everything winter has to offer.
The spot is that of an indie art house film. It's funny and asks audiences to give the cold a chance.
In case you missed it: Warburton, wastage and wins
On Monday we discussed the coming exit of James Warburton from Seven West Media in what proved to be another nightmare week for the network
StW: James Warburton set to leave Seven next week; Bad pitches; How AI is driving copyright dodging
On Tuesday we explored the scandal involving the duplicate Forbes Made For Advertising site where articles were stretched across slideshows stuffed with ads:
On Wednesday, we revealed the program for HumAIn and analysed the latest developments in the updated media legislation:
A correction to that article: we wrongly stated that Married At First Sight topped an average reach of 2m. While that would have been impressive enough, in fact the number was the average Total TV audience.
On Thursday consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier joined us to discuss how Daniel Kahneman changed the face of advertising by popularising behavioural economics:
And on Friday, we examined the strong quarterly numbers from Publicis as earnings season kicks off in the northern hemisphere:
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
Abe Udy and I will be back with an audio-led edition of Start the Week on Monday.
And if you haven’t heard enough enough from me already this week and can stomach a little more, I was a guest on the 7am Podcast, explaining how we got to the current standoff over the News Media Bargaining Code. Do take a listen.
Have a great weekend
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
Facebook always responds by saying "we decided not to take down the profile or post" at the most blatant of spammers, scammers, spam and scams.
Facebook is basically a necrotic platform at this point.
Can’t work out why some enterprising lawyer hasn’t rounded up Andrew Denton, Karl Stefanovic, Larry Emdur and all the other usual suspects in those fake ads and launched a class action against Facebook and Google. I’m sure that would get some publicity.