Joe Mandese argues that the marketing-word-of-the-year is not, as widely assumed, “Diversity” but “Trust.”
MediaPost’s Joe Mandese concludes that Trust, not Diversity, is the “real” marketing word of-the-year, based on an Advertiser Perceptions study. The research, a survey of ad execs (both marketers and agency media-buyers), found that nearly two-thirds would likely “downgrade” or scrap a media outlet from their ad plans altogether, based on a violation of trust.
While trust has always been paramount in an industry where advertisers and agencies routinely require various proofs of performance on whether their ad buys ran as promised -- pre- and post-digital -- the percentage that assert they would dump or downgrade media for violating it went up 18 percentage points over the past 18 months. That coincides with another sentiment that ostensibly grew during the pandemic: Empathy.
"Two-plus years ago, we were finding things more in the 'talk, but less action' category," says Sarah Bolton, EVP at Advertiser Perceptions, who oversaw and analyzed the study's findings, adding: "But post the pandemic, the social justice movement, the trend lines are all moving toward more accountability.”
"In the beginning,” Bolton said, “we were seeing it associated with things ethics of data-handling – whether that's data privacy or security: brand safety, ad fraud, trying to understand where these things stack up with performance and ROI and scale. But in the last 18 months, we've really zoomed in on brand safety and digital content safety.”
She adds that the subplot here is that brand marketers and agency media buyers are becoming much more cognizant of, and guarded about, the idea that their ad budgets are financially supporting media outlets that cause direct or indirect harm to society.
Source: Mandese, J. (2021, December 13). Why 'Trust,' Not 'Diversity,' Is The Real Marketing Word-of-the-Year. RTBlog, Commentary: MediaPost.
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