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Amidst the Social Media Enabled D.C. Chaos: How Brands Can Best Balance Reach vs. Responsibility in Media Buys

Corporate Social Responsibility and the D.C. Chaos. Brands should advertise in media practicing professional journalism. Learn how UM, Cadillac and Realogy balance the reach vs. responsibility marketing trade off in media buys.

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The pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was mostly incited by social media driven fake news. It again became blatantly evident that a repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good are crucial to the stability of the U.S. democratic system. Enter Corporate Social Responsibility: Brands and media buyers at agencies should be under pressure to direct advertising to media properties practicing professional journalism. Media dollars should also be directed to  underserved communities. Learn how UM , Cadillac and Realogy  balance the reach vs. responsibility/purpose driven marketing trade off in media buys.

It is not surprising that the  D.C. chaos has actually made many brands to take the decision of pausing social advertising. According to a 2019 study published in Science by MIT Sloan professor Sinan Aral and Deb Roy and Soroush Vosoughi of the MIT Media Lab. They found falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster. This effect is more pronounced with political news than other categories.  Independent, truth-seeking professional journalists apply reporting methodologies and a code of ethics that makes them accountable and transparent. Corporate social responsibility should make sure that brands advertise in trusted media properties.

However, brand marketers and the media agencies that cater to them not only need brand safety but also reach at a low cost for media buys to be efficient and ultimately obtain leads and sales.

News Sites: How it Works in Practice…

Corporate Social Responsibility
David Queamante, SVP, Client Business Partner, UM Worldwide

David Queamante,  SVP, Client Business Partner, UM Worldwide tells Portada that when he worked at “an Automotive brand, recently, we saw that News Programming has a high index among people who earn the income we wanted to see, and who buy the vehicle segments we were promoting. However, on the Finance brand that I focus on currently, we see that News Programming indexes below 100 for people who will be in-the-market for our type of loan in the next 12 months. I still try to keep News programming as part of the buy, but I’m limited in how much support I can put behind that content when other programming indexes much higher for that target.”

Queamante add thats “when we run ads for this company on Social Media, we see that our Cost-Per KPIs is much lower than what we see when we run display ads anywhere else. At the end of the day, I can’t  avoid Social Media without lowering my leads and visits. Now, we work very hard with our paid social buyers to avoid controversial/divisive posts and content as much as possible.”

Journalist Powered Content Ratings…

Separately, IPG Mediabrands, the owner of UM,  has agreed to begin using NewsGuard’s journalist-powered content ratings system for its digital news media buys in the United States, and other key markets. NewsGuard — which was founded by news media pioneer Steven Brill as a solution to the deluge of disinformation being promulgated by questionable publishers and sources — relies on human intelligence as opposed to machine-learning algorithms to detect, organize and rate the veracity of news and information publishers.  Many brands and media agencies recognize that corporate social responsibility includes advertising in trusted media properties.  IPG/ Mediabrands plans plans to use the ratings as part of its programmatic media buys made on news and information websites. “Our partnership with NewsGuard has already helped expand the scope of quality inventory available while ensuring ads remain in brand-safe and brand-suitable environments,” says Mediabrands Global Brand Safety Officer Joshua Lowcock said in a statement announcing the expansion of its agreement.

Corporate Social Responsibility: How Diversity Media Buys Work  in Practice…

Jason Riveiro, Realogy
Jason Riveiro, Senior Director, Global Growth Markets & Inclusion, Realogy

Another demand consumers have for 2021 is that brands should support media properties that target diverse and underserved audiences. Some members of the brand marketing community agree: “Inclusivity in messaging should be substantial and authentic, but also should include investment in media targeting underserved communities”,  says Jason Riveiro, Senior Director, Global Growth Markets & Inclusion tells Portada.

 

Advertising in 2021
Alexis Kerr,  Cadillac

How does this work in practice? Alexis Kerr, Cadillac’s Head of Multicultural Marketing | Multicultural Strategy, Content and Execution, notes that she has found creative ways to nurture her multicultural media partners to ensure they serve her in various different ways vs just ROI.  “Media partnerships like Hispanicize and Revolt are great examples of how partners have been able to work with us to meet those goals. We have increased our spend to support diverse communities and partnerships,” she asserts.

Custom Solutions that Balance Reach vs. Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility should include that brands advertise in trusted media properties. 
UM’s David  Queamante  notes that his agency
has worked hard to build custom solutions that balance reach with responsibility by making it easier to identify and work with Diversity-owned and Diversity-serving media partners, while still delivering on campaign goals and KPIs. “MediaBrands has made it an internal mandate to increase or improve our investment on Diversity-Owned media partners. However, we don’t want to just pick an arbitrary % of the media budget.  It may not be possible to spend a certain amount of money with diversity-owned partners – many of them lack the scale that non-Diversity-owned partners have. Due to this lower scale, investing an arbitrary amount with these partners may also have negative impact on the campaign reach and exposure to our target audiences.

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Catalogue of Diversity Owned Partners

Queamante adds that the first thing he does is to “start with a database that one of our internal agencies (MAVEN) maintains and updates several times a year. This catalogues Diversity Owned partners across more than just ethnicity. It includes Veteran-owned, Women-owned, Disability-owned and more.
The second step involves to “match the media partners on this list with our custom targets; we call them High Value Audiences (HVA). We identify these audiences using our Acxiom data stack, and we’re able to match these audiences back to media behavior. Based on the HVA media consumption of these Diversity-owned partners we’re able to create investment benchmarks that are specific to each brand and their unique audience.”  “Since these benchmarks factor in HVA media consumption, they have a positive impact on reach and exposure levels for our target.”, Queamante concludes.

 

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