• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, April 7, 2017

Brands, you have been warned. The public is more aware than ever before of how the pound in their pocket is effectively a vote on the brands they wish to be associated with. To put it bluntly, that means it's not just advertisers boycotting YouTube -- consumers are doing the same with brands that do not measure up to their expectations.

In fact, research today from YouGov shows that one in five Brits have ditched a brand at some stage because of a negative news story or scandal. We've probably all done this at some stage, and there's probably an air of complacency that allows marketers to think that people will come back once they have made their point.

However, when YouGov asked consumers about the brand they had most recently boycotted, three in four had maintained their position and fewer than one in five had gone back to using the brand fairly regularly. Of greatest concern for brands, just 2% had gone back to using the brand as much as they did before. If a consumer decides to throw you under the proverbial bus, there's only a 2% chance they will fall back in love with you all over again and a three in four chance that the boycott will hold. Not great odds.

And the reasons for boycotts? Regular readers who have heard me rant at the US tech giants will not be surprised to hear that the main reason for nearly half of boycotters is dodging tax. Just behind is treating staff unfairly.

This brings into sharp focus some research that I recently helped the Chartered Institute of Marketing with. In a nutshell, 87% of marketers revealed that there was renewed pressure on brands to act in an ethical, responsible way, yet 70% were concerned the parts of the business that can impinge on this requirements that are beyond a marketer's control. Thus, 95% argued that marketing needs a stronger voice across an organisation.

Put very simply, it's not marketing that decided to pay people less than the national minimum wage, and it's not marketing that decides its business suddenly runs through an offshore island to avoid paying millions in tax. However, it most certainly is marketing that needs to try to convince people that the brand is a good egg playing the game with a straight bat. If it is discovered that this has been a lie all along, it's then up to marketing -- and likely PR -- to rebuild bridges. 

Marketing is caught between a rock and a hard place, and it can only be through extending its reach throughout an organisation so its voice can be heard more widely that this can be tackled. However, I really don't think the omens are good here. In digital, the only interest that boards have recently shown in marketing is to ban YouTube to protect the brand's safety.

In so doing, they probably couldn't have helped but wonder why marketers are pumping money into a channel where it can be allowed to fund terror and in to a wider ecosystem where fraud and viewability issues can mean only half of what you spend money on is likely to have a chance of being seen by a human.

If this was your experience of marketing, would you dial them up in the internal conversation in your HQ, or hover your finger over the mute button? Would you see marketing as the people to fight the good fight, on behalf of the brand, or as just a cost centre that hasn't been making the wisest decisions of late?

It's an interesting question, because unless 95% of marketers get their wish, and get a louder voice through an organisation, we are going to continue to see corporate shortcuts and underhanded tactics being uncovered, and then left to marketing to try to mend.