Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Surely it has not escaped the notice of listeners to conservative talk radio that mainstream advertisers such as automobile and food manufacturers do not, for the most part, advertise on that medium.
Instead, shows like Rush Limbaugh's, Glenn Beck's and Sean Hannity's derive their revenue from advertisers on the margins of respectability, such as purveyors of over-priced gold coins, credit-improvement schemes and peddlers of dubious dietary supplements.
Mainstream firms, meanwhile, have no compunctions about advertising on MSNBC or reliably-leftist shows on broadcast television.
Do advertisers know something about the undesirability of conservative consumers? Is our money no good? Or are they just cowed by liberals who threaten to boycott if their advertisements appear on "hate radio"?
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Dec '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Definitely cowed by the lefties. Of course you also have companies like GE that is devotedly lefty themselves.
Aug '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
What are the creditor losses on unpaid GM/ Chrysler media buys ?
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Ricochet uses outside networks to feed our ads. We've considered using a direct sales approach (like the Huffington Post), but we've had to confront the political orientation of ad agency media buyers. The field consists largely of 20-somethings who live in urban areas, and their politics skew to the left. So much so, in fact, that one unblinkingly told The Logo how the Huffington Post is widely considered a middle-of-the-road publication, and the New York Times as fairly conservative.
Edited on Feb 6, 2011 at 2:13pmDec '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Remember that both Limbaugh and Hannity had big ad and endorsement contracts with GM a couple of years ago... which magically evaporated when the company took its government bailout. I don't know if that was because the hosts didn't want to be endorsing a company that they were at the same time bashing as "Government Motors" on a daily basis, or if part of the bailout strategy was to deny the hosts that ad revenue.
Jul '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
"Cowardly advertiser" is nearly a redundancy, and always has been. The Stan Freberg Show was a classic case of a comedy show that made fun of the corporate culture that would not sponsor it, until the network felt it had lost enough money airing one of the funniest shows on the air. Of course, that was a case from the center-left.
Stan's send up of Las Vegas was one for the ages.
The sad truth is that we are a long, long way down the crony capitalist road and GE is just the tip of the iceberg. The suppression of free speech is at the top of the Left's agenda, and useful idiots like Michael Steele nodding his head and saying "yep, yep," as the news readers slander Rush as a racist do not help the cause. Good riddance to incompetent rubbish.
Should we try drumming up boycotts the way the Left does? There is no real consequence to snubbing conservative sensibilities, at least outside of the movie industry where anti-Americanism is used to alienate domestic audiences in exchange for bigger numbers in France, Italy, Russia, China, et.al.
Edited on Feb 6, 2011 at 9:21pmJan '11
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Sorry, friends, but it's demographics. The audience for talk radio skews overwhelmingly old and male, the least desirable cohort to advertisers. We don't spend that much; we save and invest.
Do you think it's an accident that Gordon Liddy is a gold spokesman, or that so many advertisements are for products directed at the elderly?
But this is the inevitable result of our own failures. We let the culture get away from us and the schools get away from us and our children get away from us - and then we wonder why kids who go to school and to the movies associate Left with hip and cool.
Why, we have even come to believe that the young are naturally alienated from their parents, as if that was ever the norm in the history of any previous society anywhere in the world.
May '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
True- advertisers want to pitch to people who are shallow, mindless, emotionally impulsive, and prone to pop culture cattle herding. That spells lefty and youthful demographics.
Too many rational and thinking people on most right-leaning media.
Jun '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
It's a fear of antagonizing the more excitable of the leftwing radicals, who might embarrass the company at just the wrong time. It's a general fear of bad publicity. But also, they want to stay on good terms with labor union leaders, who tend to hate conservative talk radio.
Nov '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Most executives of large corporations are themselves pretty liberal. They rose to their position by not being controversial and they think that conservatism is controversial because liberals will berate anyone who is conservative whereas conservatives usually don’t go our of their way to insult liberals. Also, a liberal boss will hold a conservative back from advancement but a conservative boss usually just wants the job to get done and won’t hold a good employee’s politics against him.
Trying to appear liberal to get ahead in the organization will naturally rule out directing the company’s advertising budget to conservative media. As Logo said the ad agencies are even more liberal. Notice that you do occasionally hear a disguised political reference in a commercial or on a television drama. They always skew to the liberal side. They don’t think that will offend anyone. They’re all like Pauline Kael who couldn’t understand how Reagan got elected because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him.
Oct '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
The demographics argument makes intuitive sense, but the ratings (http://tinyurl.com/4oqj78g) undermine it, at least for TV.
For example, Matthews (MSNBC) goes head-to-head with Beck (FOX). In the advertisers’ sweet spot (age 25-54) there are more than seven Beck viewers for every one watching Matthews. Ouch! Beck pulls in twice the viewers that Blitzer does (CNN), and that is his closest competitor.
Beck does better in this key demographic then he does for all viewers. The demographics argument is now standing on its head.
This isn’t limited to Beck. From 5 PM to 11 PM, whether total viewers or the 25-54 cohort, not a single show on CNN, MSNBC or HLN beats a single FOX program. (The linked report doesn’t have ABC, CBS, NBC, but I understand things are even worse for MSM there.) In most cases, they struggle to get even half the FOX viewership. No wonder Obama tried to marginalize FOX (classic Alinsky tactic).
It seems clear that many advertisers are doing what is against their economic self-interest. This is what happens in (culture) war—rational market behavior goes out the window in favor of other, more pressing, goals.
May '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
The paranoia-happy ads (coins, food storage, "survival seeds," videos re the coming "End of America," wind-up radios....) get tiresome and, I think, add to the otherwise-unwarranted paranoia vibe that so many liberals take from our shows. (Well, mostly unwarranted; there is over-the-top paranoia in some cases.)
Too bad.
Aug '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
One must bear in mind that all commercial media are selling you (the audience) to the advertisers. It is not the other way around. I would hope most conservatives (intent on conserving their assets) are immune to manufactured desires for breakable plastic items from Wal-Mart.
A game I play with my children while we are watching TV is "Spot the Lie" and the object is for them to name the falsehood the advertisement is attempting to get them to believe. The answers range from "that toy will make me happy but it really won't" to "they just want to take your money" which I consider to be worth bonus points.
When conservatives, en mass, cancel their cable subscriptions, then we will know the conservative revolution has arrived. And even though it may be televised, we won't be watching it!
Book recommendation: Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman. Crucial reading.
May '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Don't take any of it to heart. How commercials end up on certain shows can be less targeted than you think. Say an advertiser was brought into a show on NBC and promised a certain rating or demographic. If the show didn't deliver, the network might offer make-goods across the NBCUniversal platform.
Sometime advertisers also make what's called an R-O-S buy (Run of Schedule). Allowing the network or station to plug in commercials where ever is a lot cheaper for the ad buyer.
Radio sales are a whole different animal. Ratings are still gathered by diary and terribly unreliable.
Jul '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
The Super Bowl ads this year were dumbed down because advertisers thought not enough audience got the ads of yesteryear. The brainless Dorito ads are the new gold standard. We can thank the government school system and the slow ebbing of cognitive skills for that. As for media ad buyers, of course they're young and liberal. To be one is to be the other. Let's hope the world lasts long enough for them to wise up.
Oct '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
"Do advertisers know something about the undesirability of conservative consumers?"
Not sure I'd accept that premise. We must be buying something worthwhile. As long as Rush and Sean and Laura and Levin and Beck, et al, continue to make beaucoup bucks doing what they do with the advertisers they have, I'm not too concerned about the specifics of their advertisers (heck, I mute my speakers during most commercials, anyway...sorry, Goldline!).
Oct '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
(Not to change the thread's original subject, but...) Is anyone else as fed up with the long-running trend of lousy SB commercials as I am? Seems to me special effects, science fiction, and human-acting animals have replaced cleverness and subtlety and thoughtful creativity in SB commercials, and have done so for a long time now.
Sep '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
The Logo: ... we've had to confront the political orientation of ad agency media buyers. The field consists largely of 20-somethings who live in urban areas, and their politics skew to the left. So much so, in fact, that one unblinkingly told The Logo how the Huffington Post is widely considered a middle-of-the-road publication, and the New York Times as fairly conservative. · Feb 6 at 1:59pm
Edited on Feb 06 at 02:13 pm
I think The Logo has hit the bullseye. Also, I would guess that many of these media buyers were journalism majors in college.
Nov '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
I think that TeeJay and The Logo are, together, spot on. The media buyers are lefties by age and "education" (schooling would be more accurate) and the people in the ranks of the corporations who handle advertising purchases are mere corporate bureaucrats. (I know of none in my experience who had much standing the the executive suite; they are generally considered irrelevant to the serious work of making the machine go.)
It is an area that the people at the top will not supervise closely and, besides, they are generally a bit left themselves. They, too, are corporate bureaucrats who have climbed the slippery pole and want to do nothing that would jeopardize their chances to remain there.
Jul '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
Yes.
Jul '10
Re: Are Advertisers Cowards Or Liberals?
From a business standpoint, what puzzles me is that ad time on conservative talk radio must be dirt cheap: the sorts of business that advertise there aren't exactly corporate titans.
So one would think that more mainstream firms would see real value on offer. Why pay premium rates to reach a million people on MSNBC when you can pitch nine million on Rush Limbaugh for peanuts?