• by Tig Tillinghast , March 26, 2002

It’s a perfectly natural and acceptable practice to have media people keep client secrets. Businesses wouldn’t work without it. But there comes a point when the web of non-disclosures gets so deep and entangled that the industry has a difficult time cleaning house.

In the last few columns, I’ve approached several issues dealing with illegal or dishonest practices, both at the agency and client side. Each time, I get a slew of “You wouldn’t believe what went on here…” stories in my email, but very few of those folks agree to share the stories with the public.

A few do pop up on the Spin Board, but the juiciest ones tend to remain obscured. And it’s this obscurity that allows certain practices to continue.

It’s a marketing industry tradition to head to a bar after work and blow off steam with colleagues. At these slightly inebriated sessions, discussion seems to almost always turn to various client or agency dealings, often tending toward the gossip of something someone was doing that he shouldn’t.

In isolation, this phenomenon isn’t particularly harmful. But in aggregate, everyone in the business grows an impression that the industry has a widespread undercurrent of shady dealings. Whether it’s inappropriate accounting, conflicts of interest, agency payola or some other form of impropriety, the sum total of the employee’s own perception of their industry is one that includes an undercurrent of sleaze.

It would be easy to blow this out of proportion, implying that many of the dealings in the industry are improper. For the most part, they’re not. But that such dealings do exist does us all a discredit because it radically affects our impression of our own industry. Once we accept that this sort of improper behavior occurs at all – and with impunity – then we hold ourselves to a lower standard in our own dealings.

The culture of an industry is defined not by the mission statements you can read on the companies’ website, but by the sense of propriety that its workers discuss at Jake’s Tavern. And people holding themselves up to that sense of their company and industry culture make the individual, day-to-day decisions.

That standard, up against which we hold ourselves, would be much higher if we could shine some more light onto business abuses. This won’t happen by itself, as no one individual is served by tattling on abusive employers or partners.

Perhaps some trade groups could set up a whistle blower programs. Agency groups, like the AAAA, could put up rewards for media vendor employees who spotlight failed and unreported media delivery. Advertiser organizations could guarantee the job security of ad agency employees who reveal double dipping, conflicts of interest and outright fraudulent behavior.

In government spending, public and contractor employees didn’t start blowing whistles until Congress passed specific laws protecting them. While waste still occurs, there are far fewer $1,000 toilet seats being bought by the military.

Today, we in the private sector have the same opportunity to clean up the system. It hurts at first, as the publicity only reinforces the negative, but it’s the only way to get results. The reality is that advertisers don’t always need to hire agencies, and as different forms of media proliferate, there are more and more alternative partners that can satisfy marketing needs. Buyers and sellers alike can’t afford to have the advertisers’ trust eroded.