Days after financial services giant Morgan Stanley informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing "objectionable editorial coverage," global energy giant BP has adopted a similar press strategy.
According to a copy of a memo on the letterhead of BP's media-buying agency, WPP Group's MindShare, the global marketer has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward negative editorial coverage.
Another magazine executive who had not heard about BP’s policy or of Morgan Stanley’s said his company has unwritten guidelines with advertisers from several industries, including auto, airlines and tobacco, to pull their ads if related negative stories are in the issue. These cases, the executive said, occur more with news magazines than lifestyle ones.
Great, our news is being managed by advetising. Wonderful. So really, everything we read has to be friendly to whoever has paid for the advertising. So if BP has a pipeline break and kill tons of wildlife and do huge amounts of damage to the environment they can manage the news by threatening to pull their advertising and none of us will know about it.
