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.
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They are all getting out even the American banks are starting to get jittery about this country. If you leave it too long to get out then you might have difficulties. Just walk down the street and look at it. I’ve been in third world hell holes where the people look happier.
Scamdemic squandering, public sector plundering, climate pandering, energy blundering – extended agony of compulsive economic self-harm.
The cure is now available across the ocean in the New World.
The technicalities of whether we are in a recession don’t interest me much. It just seems obvious that socialism reduces prosperity and freedom, and always will.
Every last advantage we had has been destroyed. The CIA used to list Britain in terms of being a major resource for coal. All gone and shut off or being shut off. Believe me there will be nothing left which is as they want it. Just like they stripped the RAF AWACS aeroplanes down so that they could never be started again. They have destroyed your country and your quality of life and now they just wait for you to drop off. Rot away in the final years under a canopy of toxic fog.
Understand the situation. A lot of people are so lost that they have to dress up as furry animals in order to have sex. What does that tell you? The steam has gone out of the system the culture the mythos has died. Forget all this nonsense about government scrutiny it is grotesque and laughable.
Blimey! Do they do that in Parliament as well?
We finally sold up and got out in August 2024. Aside from a pension, we pulled everything out, and have now stuck over two thirds in property where the weather is nicer, the food better, the scenery much grander, and where there’s far more fun stuff going on.
I don’t weep for England; it’s an arbitrary concept. No, I just tell people to go where you are treated best (courtesy of Nomad Capitalist).
To my two kids, aged 12 and 14, I say:
Find what you enjoy and do it well.
And – Travel! Travel! Travel!
Of course countries are arbitrary but they do make a difference. England is worse off without you, but good luck!
A recession should really be calculated by GDP on a per capita basis. In real terms we have been in a recession for years.
Indeed I find it astonishing that anyone bothers quoting GDP without qualifying it per capita – meaningless!
You can see a pattern developing here.
The ONS admits that it does not have reliable figures for the UK’s population, so they’d claim that it would be impossible to generate any accurate per-capita GDP figures.
Rather than address the problem, they and their political masters prefer to keep quoting the meaningless headline GDP figures knowing that the public are too gullible to question the data.
Indeed. Basic statistics and economics should be taught in schools – but they are probably racist.
Vaguely on topic (economics, politics) I have been ploughing my way through this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLzc9kobDk
Lex Fridman interviewing Javier Milei. It’s rambling in places and Fridman I think should have made it more interactive, but it’s refreshing to listen to a politician who has actually thought about what governments should and should not do and has educated himself a bit about political and economic philosophy.
Unfortunately they are too po-faced and arrogant to admit their mistakes. Hopefully America can demonstrate that lower taxes equates to more revenue, along with less bureaucracy – Less government is what we need!
Predictably, today’s BBC news headlines are dominated by the Elon Musk’s supposed Nazi salute and Donald’s decision to pardon the “Capitol rioters”, neatly avoiding having to address what seemed to be a pretty polished inauguiration speech.
I assume that our media will keep up this snarky line of reporting for the next 4 years, regardless of any evidence of the success of Trump’s policies.
The recent sinking of the pound vs the dollar will make things worse, boosting inflation