Diageo joins Facebook ad boycott

United Kingdom | Is there more to it than just woke culture signalling? The world’s number one drinks company, Diageo, said it will be pulling paid brand advertising on “major social media platforms” as of July, driven by concerns over hate speech and divisive content on the platforms.

The company, which makes Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff and Guinness, announced on 27 June 2020 that it will “continue to discuss with media partners how they will deal with unacceptable content.” The company didn’t say which platforms will be included or for how long. 

Diageo is the first major drinks company to make such an announcement, amid a boycott (#StopHateForProfit”) that began with Facebook on 17 June, but is now hitting other social media platforms. The Coca-Cola Company, on 26 June, also said it would pause advertising on all social media platforms globally during July, while Unilever is pulling advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the US until the end of the year. Heineken, on 2 July, only said it will join the global Facebook boycott.

After a group of civil rights organisations called on Facebook advertisers to pause their ad spend during the month of July, more than 800 marketers, including Starbucks, Patagonia, and The North Face announced their intention to join, according to a running list from Sleeping Giants, a twitter account.

Will Facebook care?

In 2019, Facebook brought in USD 69.7 billion in ad revenue globally through its millions of advertisers. Since the launch of the boycott campaign, the list of companies opting to pause is growing, but Facebook is still looking at less than a 5 percent hit to revenue, analysts say.

What is more, due to the covid-19 pandemic many analysts had already expected leading advertisers to scale back on spending in the second half of this year.

The website fool.com reports that Nike and Anheuser-Busch slashed their daily spending on Facebook and Instagram by USD 100,000 in early June.