The media industry has lost the plot to its own novel.
Case in tipping point: Laura Desmond, a top executive at a media ad agency, accepted a personal payment of stock options from a media sales
organization that her agency does business with. This “Pete Rose betting on baseball” kind of conflict of interest is shocking enough to spark major reform. Instead, it was barely a
blip in the news coverage of our industry.
If Desmond accepted a seat on the board of Tremor Media to gain insight to help her clients navigate the online video space, then that’s great
thinking on her part. Accepting personal payment for doing so appears professionally awkward at best. When this was first reported, she defended her actions by claiming her position on
Tremor’s board had zero influence on the reported $18 million dollars of media spending her agency placed with Tremor Media (which represented 20% of Tremor’s revenues).
I
worked at an ad agency. When a boss’s boss had a “relationship” with a publisher of a magazine we were evaluating, that magazine made the recommended plan. So while there
may not have been direct influence in this case with Desmond, it’s impossible for there to have been none.
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When this perceived breach of ethics was uncovered, Desmond could have been
fired. She could have resigned. She could have been suspended until a further investigation was conducted. Instead, she went to Cannes.
Let’s be clear. Desmond did not break
any laws, and she has a track record of success servicing her clients, with a career many would love to emulate. I mean no disrespect to her with this column, but this decision to accept personal
payment from a publishing vendor her agency spends her client’s dollars with, has me wondering: How did we arrive at this point, and isn’t it time to say enough already?
How many
cars does AOL have to give away to media buyers, how many trips do media buyers need to take on a publisher’s dime, and how many inappropriate gifts have to exchange hands -- all in the name of
“building relationships” -- before we recognize “the way business gets done” is bad for our business? “Building relationships” has become a euphemism for condoning
the acceptance of bribes.
Our collective job is to help an advertising communication message reach its intended target. How do the millions of dollars spent by publishers to “build
relationships” with media buyers truly help this cause?
What if this money was spent developing unique research to learn how advertisers can create messages that have a better chance of
resonating with the audience that a publisher reaches? What if publishers reinvested this money in social media to extend the awareness of their clients’ campaigns? There are so many
options for how to allocate these “T&E” dollars that could directly affect the success of a client’s campaign that don’t involve tickets to major sporting events.
This entire ethical debacle started with free lunches. Over the years, things have gradually escalated to extravagant gifts, all-expense-paid trips, a car, and now stock options -- all on the
piggybacks of our clients’ bank accounts.
This has to stop, it should stop -- and it is so easy to make it stop.
Clients can’t dictate this change. Publishers
won’t, either. It’s up to (insert irony here) the top executives at ad agencies to put an end to this behavior.
All that needs to be done is for Sir Martin Sorrell and the other
leaders of the major ad holding companies to simply and definitively declare that the only thing media-buying employees can accept from media sellers are lunches. Nothing more or less will be
tolerated. End of story.
Media graft was one way of enticing young talent to join the industry at a time when media sat at the back of the bus. Today, we’re driving it.
Isn’t it time we acted like leaders, instead of children left alone in a candy store?