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.”
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