Digital media is one of those inventions, like television, with the potential to change the world for the better.
Instead, many digital spaces have become a cesspool, and a cesspool is an unhealthy place for marketers wanting to connect with future customers.
Meet GARM
Some of the world’s largest advertisers including Adidas, Diageo, Mars, Procter & Gamble and Unilever are members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
Self-regulation by a powerful industry like media or marketing is a sorry excuse for a joke, but it’s not as humorless as no regulation at all.
According to Business Insider, the immediate focus of the industry consortium is to create actions, processes and protocols for protecting people and brands from nefarious content online.
Luis Di Como, executive vice-president, global media, at Unilever, said, “When industry challenges spill into society, creating division and putting our children at risk, it’s on all of us to act.”
The biggest agency groups – WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic and Dentsu – are also members of GARM, along with media owners such as NBCUniversal and News Corp’s Unruly, as well as many trade bodies such as the Association of National Advertisers in the US, World Federation of Advertisers, ISBA and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
Members of the alliance met for the first time last week at Cannes Lions festival, where they urged other companies to support the new initiative, describing it as “a call to action for more collective responsibility in media practices”.
I like the direction and spirit of cooperation. I don’t like thinking that as soon as it costs one of the major players money, they’ll bail on whatever “commitments” they’ve made to act honorably.
