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U.K.’s Top Ad Firms Risk ‘Cancel Culture’ Backlash Over Links to Anti-Right Activist Campaign

by Richard Eldred
23 July 2023 1:00 PM

Five of the U.K.’s largest advertising firms face mounting criticism as they become entangled with the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), a group aiming to sever the “economic link” between advertising and “harmful content”. The activist-led CAN was set up by Stop Funding Hate campaigners and the situation has been likened to the influence of Stonewall on organisations’ gender policies. The Telegraph has more.

The U.K.’s biggest advertising firms risk being “overrun by cancel culture” after signing up to a campaign linked to activists orchestrating boycotts of centre-Right media outlets, Conservative MPs have said.

Five of Britain’s biggest ad companies are members of the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), an organisation that says it wants to break the “economic link” between advertising and “harmful content”.

However, CAN was set up and staffed by activists involved in the controversial Stop Funding Hate campaign, which has led boycotts against news outlets such as the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and GB News.

Tory MPs have said the firms being drawn into politics has parallels with the row over the decision by Coutts to close Nigel Farage’s bank account because of his political views.

They have also compared it to organisations signing up with Stonewall and allowing the charity to influence their policies on gender.

Founded in 2019, CAN has seven “manifestos” that it asks members to include in “all agency briefs and requests for proposals”. The manifestos tell brands how to improve their performance on sustainability, hate speech, misinformation, diversity, ad fraud, informed consent and children’s wellbeing.

It counts the U.K.’s five biggest ad agencies among its members: Omnicom, Publicis Media U.K., the Interpublic Group, Dentsu, and WPP via its media investment group, GroupM. Household names in CAN’s membership include Virgin Media O2, Nationwide and Innocent.

But Tory MPs have raised concerns over the organisation’s links with Stop Funding Hate, which has pressured advertisers into cutting ties with Conservative-leaning news outlets.

Stop Funding Hate has also attracted criticism because of the views of some of its staff.

The Telegraph has previously revealed that a member of the campaign, Amanda Morris, has defended Hamas and shared the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ – a slogan often used at rallies to call for the destruction of Israel.

Stop Funding Hate helped to draft CAN’s code on hate speech, which commits brands to “avoid advertising with media outlets that fuel hatred on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, migration status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability or any other group characteristic”.

CAN’s co-founder Jake Dubbins was an ‘unpaid advisor’ to Stop Funding Hate, while its other co-founder Harriet Kingaby previously served as a Director of Reliable Media, the company name of Stop Funding Hate and Stop Funding Heat – a sister organisation that campaigns on climate change.

Alex Murray, CAN’s Head of Advocacy, meanwhile worked for four years as Stop Funding Hate’s Community Organiser.

Just weeks ago, Mr. Dubbins criticised the decision by advertising magazine The Drum to take sponsorship money from GB News, saying its relationship with the channel was a “challenging position to hold”.

Lee Anderson, the Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, said: “This is like the Stonewall campaign. Businesses are being duped into signing up to some fuzzy, cuddly-sounding name only later to realise that the thing they signed up to has morphed into a monster and become highly political.”

Ben Bradley, the MP for Mansfield, said: “We’ve seen in recent days that the banking sector has been overrun by cancel culture.

“It’s deeply worrying that a similar takeover is happening in advertising and that so many household names are being duped by a so-called ‘conscious advertising network’ that we now find out is being run by a bunch of far-Left, politically motivated activists at Stop Funding Hate.”

Sally-Ann Hart, the MP for Hastings and Rye, said: “The Left love to silence those they disagree with, whether it’s banks shutting accounts, or brands choosing to boycott TV channels.

“If these businesses and ad agencies want to engage in ‘conscious advertising’, they’d better find another bunch of people to run their marketing strategies and stop outsourcing them to a campaign led by Stop Funding Hate.”

Worth reading in full.

Tags: AdvertisingBoycottCANCancel CultureConscious Advertising NetworkStonewall

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9 Comments
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RickH
RickH
4 years ago

Again :

“ … the success of Britain’s vaccine rollout”

What ‘success’? A ~1% ARR isn’t much of an achievement, is it?

23
-2
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

P.S. Why does this exaggeration matter?

… Because it opens the door to perpetuating all the ills that accrue from a mythical dependence on an injection as a condition of normal life : such as vaccine passports and ‘boosters’ in perpetuity.

Liberty is not conditional.

29
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Nobody care what you say Rick, they must know you’re a fool. “The uptake of the vaccine has been astonishingly high. For all over-50s, uptake is 94%.”
“Enthusiasm among those in their late 40s was so high that when we opened up the booking system last week they briefly overloaded the website.” Sore Loser? Yep, that’s it.

1
-56
helenf
helenf
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

Reference please for those figures. I smell fake news. And looks like uptake for second injection is considerably lower.

16
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

I totally agree with what you say – the uptake of the ‘vaccines’ has been high … …

… for an undertested concoction of little benefit and extaordinarily high level of harms when compared with other medicines.

But, of course, what people do in this climate of power propaganda and deliberately induced fear is totally outside the realm of sense and evidence. That has been true for over a year in every aspect of government policy – including vaccines, which a desperate public has held onto like a leaking lifeboat.Whether people en masse are ‘stupid’ is a moot point; but they are certainly behaving ‘stupidly’ – in the sense of avoiding rationality and the bleedin’ obvious. I have no doubt than many would swallow cyanide pills if told they were nectar.

It’s not what I ‘say’ which is the issue. Everything is based on evidence from trials that I have explicitly presented. Hard numbers. I note that you haven’t even tried to debate those numbers and when they mean, or even show an understanding of the statistical concepts that they embody.

So … in terms of ‘fool’ – the cap and bells are worn by you. I conclude that you have no argument to present (forget the ambiguity of your favourite parotted line-graph). I’m talking the numbers related to treatment and control groups.

As to your comment about being a ‘sore loser’ : well, firstly, how can you be a ‘loser’ when your opponent just runs off in a random direction asserting nonsense. And secondly, the accusation shows a petty mind merely stamping a foot when it can’t get its own way – the mentality of the playground.

6
0
Mayo
Mayo
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Absolute Risk isn’t 1%.

That’s a calculation based on numbers from an early end point.

1
-17
Adamb
Adamb
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

I think he means absolute risk reduction.

13
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RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

Precisely.

11
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

RickH does mean that , but it’s a bad measure on several counts, most notable is that is it is hard to gauge in a trial, since the baseline risk varies for every person. Relative risk reduction is superior in every way, esp since it obviates the need to know the baseline risk, which is so volatile. It tells you, independently of the baseline risk, what the risk is if you do something, versus the risk if you do not do it, which is what you really need to know.

With some of the vaccines there is relative risk reduction of 95%, i.e. you are twenty times less likely to get covid19, since 95% is 19/20ths of the risk of getting covid is eliminated, leaving you with 5%, i.e 1/20th of the risk remaining.

It’s a far superior metric, much easier to calculate and understand than the useless and inaccurate ARR. RickH is biased so he wants to cast the vaccine in a poor light, despite their success in driving infections very low, as the plot shows; the vaccine works great.

Screenshot 2021-04-17 at 23.01.04.png
0
-25
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

he’s far too ignorant to know what he means.

0
-33
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

Early endpoint? It’s numbers based on comparison of treatment and control groups. I’ve previously quoted sources and detail.

Last edited 4 years ago by RickH
7
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  Mayo

yes, because the trials end when there are sufficient numbers to get the relative risk reduction, the important number that tells you the value of doing something versus not doing it. Pay no heed whatsoever to RickH, he’s ignorant.

The trials are not designed to measure absolute risk reduction, RickH is too think to know about that.

0
-25
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

This success:

Screenshot 2021-04-17 at 23.01.04.png
0
-27
Adamb
Adamb
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

Yes we’ve seen that meaningless graph many times now, thanks.

21
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

it’s a great shape  asymptotically plunging to zero due to vaccine.

0
-25
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
4 years ago
Reply to  Adamb

You see that big peak in cases in January 2021?
That was caused by your vaccines. Massive increase in infections in the first few days following the first dose. Identical pattern seen everywhere else around the world where a big vaccine programme was launched.
Similarly the peak in deaths. Caused by your vaccines. Pushing frail elderly people in care homes over the edge.
Your vaccines are duds.

24
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

> Massive increase in infections in the first few days 

yeah right so the dead vaccine gives old people covid19! I thought I’d heard it all, but that just takes the cake! You need help.

0
-37
realarthurdent
realarthurdent
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

The vaccine causes the immune system to be depressed for the first week or so after the first dose, allowing viruses including SARS-COV-2 to strike. Particularly dumb idea to launch a vaccine in the middle of the respiratory virus season whilst the luve virus is still circulating.

The flu vaccine is always given out well in advance of the winter flu season, for this reason.

Last edited 4 years ago by realarthurdent
21
0
JohnK
JohnK
4 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Or it should be. Last year, they extended the age range for ‘flu jabs, and I received a promotional letter about it, rather late in the season. I ignored it, as by the time it was done it would have been a waste of time, given the absence of situations where there could have been a ‘flu risk. There wasn’t much of it around anyway, if you believe the stats. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of surplus ‘flu products that will be out of date. Always a bit of guess work about what to offer each year, with ‘flu mutating regularly.

1
0
watersider
watersider
4 years ago
Reply to  realarthurdent

Silly question probably, but has someone invented an actual vaccination against this Chinese Wuhan Flu?
The only treatment which Bill Gates and the Communist WHO recommend is Gene Therapy. Correct me if I am wrong.

6
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

You need to get to grips with basic statistical concepts – such as correlation, causation – and time. I understand that you’ve not yet got to grips with risk calculations, either.

As said , on your impressionistic basis, you can make as good a case for increased mortality/culling of the vulnerable after the introduction of the ‘vaccines’.

Last edited 4 years ago by RickH
18
-1
fon
fon
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

sore loser? I got _your_ number.

0
-27
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  fon

fon – You haven’t got any numbers – or even a basic knowledge of what they mean. 🙂

4
0
Noumenon
Noumenon
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

This fon guy, his posts read like he uses words he doesn’t understand.

13
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Noumenon

I think we know after all this time that he hasn’t a clue about basic statistical concepts or experimental procedure. He hasn’t engaged with anything of substance. On reflection, probably not 77th Brigade – I don’t think their recruitment procedures would be quite that flawed 🙂

3
0
ebygum
ebygum
4 years ago
Reply to  Noumenon

Yes, agreed, I suspect either English isn’t his first language, in which case he should bugger off and bother the people in his own country, or he’s a computer programme!

3
0
Paul B
Paul B
4 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHkGShmees4

4
0
Attaboy
Attaboy
4 years ago

so can I go outside now?

4
0
Annie
Annie
4 years ago
Reply to  Attaboy

Hazmattaboy!

5
0
Dorian_Hawkmoon
Dorian_Hawkmoon
4 years ago

“data, not dates” – only data when it gets worse, he means; data getting better is ignored.

10
0
B.F.Finlayson
B.F.Finlayson
4 years ago

‘Today’s Covid deaths are the lowest they’ve been in more than seven months, after falling by almost 70% compared to last Monday’s 13′.

One must remember to define what ‘Covid deaths’ means. The current newspeak now omits to to say whether death WITH or FROM Covid19, and in either case false positives in the test have been inflating this figure by a factor of 4 (even at the lower end of the scale) since the onset of mass testing.
Now onto the meaningless graph being provided by Fon. Let us go to the possible source of the graph, but include all info (below):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-reported-sars-cov-2-deaths-in-england/covid-19-confirmed-deaths-in-england-report

OK. Fon claims his single red line as vaxx success, but it is simply the usual seasonal peak of flus in January. It happens every year so nothing to see.
Crucially, when divided into separate age groups one can see the mortality figures follow precisely the same trend independently of whether that age group had been jabbed or not.
The main difference is that the over 80s mortality curve incline becomes dramatically steeper than all other age groups as soon as the vaxxes are rolled out (mainly for that age group) in early December.
In mid Jan 2021 it peaks at 12,000 deaths per 100,000 for this 80+ age group, whereas the 70-79 age group peaks simultaneously at around 2,000 deaths per 100,000.
Clearly flu deaths always hit the elderly harder, the 80+ group are more vulnerable, and the usual caveat applies that coincidence is not causation, but one must question if that that mortality multiplier of 6x over the lower age 70-79 group has ever been as marked on previous year’s flu stats? From what I can so far find it has not, but I have yet to see a directly comparable graph for seasonal flu. Maybe someone can provide a link?
Figure 3.a. Seven-day rolling average mortality rates (per 100,000 population) in laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 by age group, from week 27 onwards

Covid Deaths by Age (Jul20-Feb21).png
Last edited 4 years ago by B.F.Finlayson
11
0
MikeAustin
MikeAustin
4 years ago

Why is the government relying on the threat of variants? Ferguson’s models have always predicted deaths an order of magnitude above reality. Why do they believe them now, when surges in death due to respiratory causes in the summer is unheard of? And why the extra testing now that the ‘covid deaths’ and ‘covid cases’ are subsiding?
Maybe they know something about upcoming fatalities? What could that be? Pathogenic priming from the jabs, the probabilities increasing as the victims become younger? The regular tests can be used to misattribute these deaths. The playing down of the efficacy of the jabs prepares the way to remove them from the narrative.
It is a frightening scenario, but there are few plausible alternatives that fit all these things together so well.

8
0
Julian
Julian
4 years ago
Reply to  MikeAustin

They need variants because they know that Ferguson’s models are increasingly losing credibility.

3
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Absolutely. Most of us have noted the constant pattern of the Scary Fairy being given a blood transfusion every time the underlying anaemia shows.

What is so terrifying is the lack of such obvious perception amongst swathes of the public.

2
0
adamino
adamino
4 years ago

Rather like climate change modellers not taking into account the quantity of water in the atmosphere, could the reduction be due to the respiratory infection cycle coming to a close? Or is that too much of a stretch?

4
0
BTLnewbie
BTLnewbie
4 years ago

Is “fon” worth the effort of engaging with. Unlike Mayo, who challenged with some good points, he seems to bring nothing useful to the party.

9
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago

One thing that concerns me about repeating articles focused around a day’s figures – this unscientific data is also subject to the reverse spin if figures briefly increase.

1
0

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