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Unilever Says It Will Resume Advertising on Facebook
- hmate9 6y agoAs expected. They withdrew while it was cool and gave good PR.
- Technically 6y agoIt's still cool and good pr to not give money to Facebook.
- zdragnar 6y agoIs it good pr if noone (or few enough) care anymore? I am thinking that PR- public relations- needs an interested public for the relationship to be effected.
- Technically 6y agoIt's not clear Facebook ever had the interested market they claim.
- ralfn 6y agoUnilever, stolen by the Brits from the Dutch and now slowly being turned into something as morally questionable as Nestle. Im not buying their products anymore. Protip in the Netherlands: go to another supermarket than AH or stick to homebrands.
- mathattack 6y agoHow is Nestle morally questionable?
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agohttps://www.dailydot.com/unclick/nestle-california-bottled-water/ https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/nestle-california-bottled-w...
- dewey 6y agoPick one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé#Controversy_and_criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé#Controversy_and_critici...
- tfsh 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9 - scroll to the controversy section
- ComputerGuru 6y agoLikely a reference to this 1974 report/investigation into Nestle pretty much intentionally giving mothers in developing countries free breast milk substitute, marketing it as superior to the real thing, then charging money for it once they’ve left the hospital and their own milk has dried up: http://archive.babymilkaction.org/pdfs/babykiller.pdf http://archive.babymilkaction.org/pdfs/babykiller.pdf
- mathattack 6y agoWow. Thanks!
- missedthecue 6y agofwiw, this claim was brought forth by a environmental group. Nestle sued them in court and won.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pg_bot 6y agoThey have been through an endless number of scandals and are one of the most boycotted companies in the world. Child labor, baby formula scandals, water rights, pollution, corruption, tainted food, price fixing, and general promotion of unhealthy food.
- momokoko 6y agoConsidering the Dutch created modern slavery and the modern concept of destroying entire cultures for profit via passive capital investment, I’m not sure the Dutch are great shepherds either.
- adamnemecek 6y agoWasn’t it the Portuguese?
- UI_at_80x24 6y agoYes it was. Specifically referring to Chattel slavery.
- iamacyborg 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI’m not sure what Dutch people today have to do with decisions Dutch people from hundreds of years ago.
- dukeofdoom 6y ago
- LatteLazy 6y agoUnilever are VERY hard to boycott. They make almost the entire market of their products including a lot of "own brands". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unilever_brands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unilever_brands
- MereInterest 6y agoNon-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unilever_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unilever_brands
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago> Unilever are VERY hard to boycott. Not really, but this depends on two things: what kinds of products you desire, and where you live. Almost everything in the link you sent is a "novelty" or "luxury" product. I read most of that page, and personally, the items I don't buy because I don't need, or I have alternatives that are eco-conscious or local. I mean look at that list: popsicles, ice cream, bullion, pre-made salad dressing, pre-made side dishes, low-cost ice cream, pre-made sauces... almost none of that exists in my house because I like to cook, so my Unilever surface is apparently non-existant (I bet there are a few things I own because there are a lot of sub-brands, but at first blush, I'm making a subjective plea). But for that last part, it all depends where you live. I have the luxury of grocery co-ops that are sustainable and I love to cook. My parents live in a food desert in upstate new york, with only one mammoth grocery store within 30 miles, and they hate cooking. They even hate washing dishes: they buy plastic forks and paper plates and throw it all out AFTER EVERY MEAL. But developed cultures have trouble with "not needing novelty", and convenience seems to always win, which makes the fight all that much harder.
- programmertote 6y agoI can confirm. I work in the advertising industry (only to pay my bills until I can retire or get back into software industry one day), and Unilever and P&G are one of the biggest advertisers/clients.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ksec 6y ago> stolen by the Brits from the Dutch Citation ? From Wiki - In September 1929, Unilever was formed by a merger of the operations of Dutch Margarine Unie and British soapmaker Lever Brothers, with the name of the resulting company a portmanteau of the name of both companies.
- ve55 6y agoIt is interesting how much press Facebook constantly gets for 'profiting off of hate', but yet I never see Twitter and others mentioned in this light nearly as often, let alone any media organization. Regardless of how good their policies are (or aren't), it's vastly under-appreciated how difficult it is to enact policies when your users are measured in the billions and single moderation mistakes often get you a lot of heat and make you even more enemies. Meanwhile every government, special interest group, think tank, political party, and so on, are constantly pressuring you with large-scale public campaigns to change your policies in various ways to benefit them. It's truly a mess that I hope we develop better frameworks for in the future, because the current one seems to be entering some pretty bad areas for everyone involved (And I mean everyone - even Facebook does not want to be the moderator here, because they realize it is an unwinnable position that makes them more enemies).
- JKCalhoun 6y ago> It is interesting how much press Facebook constantly gets for 'profiting off of hate' The press I see here on HN is that they profit off our privacy. I haven't seen 'profiting off of hate'.
- eropple 6y agoFacebook uncritically permitted the government and in Myanmar to foment genocide using their platform for propaganda[0]. They are now blocking requests from Gambia and a group of other countries, which has accused Myanmar of genocide at the World Court, to access posts and communications from Myanmar police, military, and other government officials[1]. Beyond that, just look at the dumpsters-ful of hate speech (anti-trans memes, etc.) out of the American right wing, passing without criticism; only recently has Facebook bothered to at least even point out that lies are actually lies in their ecosystem. It would be wrong, perhaps, to say that Facebook supports hate. It would not be wrong to say that they're okay with it, and would be righter still to say that they profit from it. [0] - https://archive.is/TYp9A https://archive.is/TYp9A [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-facebook/facebook-rejects-request-to-release-myanmar-officials-data-for-genocide-case-idUSKCN2521PI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-facebook/facebook...
- mastax 6y agoPresumably they used this as an experiment to see if their Facebook ads were worthwhile? Sort of a bad time to do it with all the confounding factors but should be clear enough. I suppose this means the ads worked or the marketing director was persuasive.
- chevman 6y agoAre folks not aware of the idea of a 'control' group or 'hold-out' group? It's easy to mathematically prove the effectiveness of some types of direct response digital advertising, such as what corporations are running on Facebook.
- jsiepkes 6y ago> Unilever said Thursday that it felt Facebook has made enough progress for it to feel comfortable resuming advertising with the company. > Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have committed to better management of harmful content on their platforms, agreeing to common definitions for 11 harmful content areas, consistent reporting on the prevalence of such content on their platforms and independent auditing, Unilever said in a statement. If they had stated upfront what their conditions were to return to the platform I would have believed it. But now without evidence of any measurable improvement Unilever suddenly feels like Facebook is "fixed". More likely is Unilever thinks with the US presidential election over and Trump out there won't be such a big "hate for profit" backlash anymore. They probably don't want to miss out on the revenue the Facebook ad's generated.
- cm2012 6y agoIt generally doesn't make sense for companies to get involved with Twittersphere activism. It doesn't solve the purported problem and it's impossible to please the crowd, as you can see in the rest of the comments on this thread. Here's what I wrote about the boycott four months ago on HN: "I'm also a FB advertiser. Here my thoughts on it: 1) Facebook's reach is unique. If you want to share a message that's important to you with groups of people you care about reaching in the world, there's no better way to reach them at scale. 2) Facebook has had a number of negative sounding news cycles in the past few years (Cambridge Analytica, etc.), and data shows that the average American hasn't changed their behavior based on them. 70% of all Americans and Canadians use Facebook or Instagram at least once a month, and 55% of all Americans and Canadians use it at least once per day. Facebook's monthly and daily user counts have only grown, including this last quarter. 3) Very few advertisers ended up cutting spend during the boycott. Many who did so wanted to cut ad spend in a COVID environment anyway. For instance, Unilever and Coca-Cola also paused Twitter ads, which has nothing to do with the boycott. 4) I myself believe that, at least in comparison to other companies like Google, Facebook does try to police hate speech, and it's a hard job."
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago> It generally doesn't make sense for companies to get involved with Twittersphere activism One of the unspoken trends in pop-culture activism is a seething hatred of large corporations. The current trend is that the only acceptable criticisms are those that are "punching up", meaning they're directed at someone or something of higher perceived social status. Taken to the extremes, the only safe targets for "punching up" are the largest corporations and billionaires. This mentality is especially prevalent among the younger students I've mentored. They seem highly confident that corporations are somehow taking something from them, but they can't exactly explain it. For example, virtually everyone is convinced that Facebook is selling their data, yet when pressed they can't explain what "their data" is, or who Facebook might be selling it to (Facebook doesn't sell data, the idea that Facebook is selling people's data is a myth). It's amazing to hear so many people insist that Instagram is listening to their conversations to sell ads (they're not), yet they can't point to any sort of background activity, battery drain, network activity, or reverse engineering reports. The supposed evil of large corporations is treated like magic. Likewise, many of my mentees will insist that large corporations "don't pay any taxes". Yet when I explain that corporate income tax is only one of many taxes that companies pay and that the corporations they're thinking of are actually paying corporate income taxes on their earnings, they assume I'm somehow misinformed. In the hyper-connected social media of 2020, it seems the safest and most persistent themes are "corporations are bad". This is easily bolstered by cherry-picking a small number of anecdotes of bad things that were done by corporations, yet it's missing the point that corporations do a lot of things, the vast majority of which are not "bad". It's the equivalent of saying "humans are bad" after reading about a few serial killers. The idea is especially sticky among young people because they haven't yet worked inside of corporations long enough to realize that corporations are just groups of people. They speak of corporations as some sort of sentient alien entity, or as an extension of Zuckerberg and Bezos.
- the-dude 6y agoNice timing from the PR department : this is how its done.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- paulpauper 6y agoGood for them. I guess they figured out a way to get a positive ROI from those costly US Facebook clicks, but probably they do a lot of advertising in cheaper markets.
- fareesh 6y agoNow that the US Presidential election is over, all the various grievances which were political activism masquerading as social causes, have now run their course. These various initiatives and concerned corporations will magically return during future elections.
- jariel 6y agoOh, if only that were the case. Yes, it will abate, but I'm afraid otherwise it's here to stay. This is the confluence of expression, egoism, ideology and capitalism smashing together on the internets. Only a highly structured social system with 'social rules built in' I think can combat that. See: any 'old world culture' where tons of rules and norms exist 'off the books' which keep civilisation in check. For better or worse.
- handmodel 6y agoDoes anyone know by how much (if at all) ad prices went up during the months before the election? I don't use FB but on YouTube more than half my ads were political. I would assume that the increase was noticeable - so if you are going to shift somewhere else for a few months that was a good time to try it.
- TedShiller 6y agoThat didn’t take long.
- no_wizard 6y agoUnsurprisingly, companies go where the eye balls are, especially since Facebook marketing campaigns can very effective forms of advertising for small or big businesses alike. I imagine, quietly or not, that most of the companies that said they weren’t going to advertise in Facebook will do the same. I figured it wasn’t going to be until after the New Year that’s the only surprising thing here to me
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoMost of the companies already have, with many doing so as early as August.
- rossdavidh 6y agoI am not surprised that corporations will advertise somewhere morally questionable. I am (very slightly) more surprised that they still think Facebook advertising is a good (in the sense of "effective") use of their money, given all that has come out in the last few months about how poorly targeted FB's supposedly targeted advertising is. But then, perhaps the answer is that almost all advertising is really poorly targeted and a waste of money, and CEO's (and their advertising departments) are just not willing to accept that.
- mliker 6y ago> I am (very slightly) more surprised that they still think Facebook advertising is a good (in the sense of "effective") use of their money, given all that has come out in the last few months about how poorly targeted FB's supposedly targeted advertising is Would love to learn more about how "poor" this targeted advertising is, considering most SMBs use digital advertising by Google/Facebook to reach the customers they want.
- bigphishy 6y agoAdvertising on facebook is a waste of money.
- chillacy 6y agoThere are many losses in the funnel to conversion, poor targeting is probably not even the biggest. At the end of the day if you can spend $1 in advertising and make $2 in sales, who wouldn’t press that button again and again and again?
- dorkwood 6y agoI guess Zuckerberg was right when he said "advertisers will be back to Facebook soon enough". https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-53262860 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-53262860
- coldtea 6y agoI believe that: 1) Companies should be free to chose where to show their ads, but... 2) ... companies should be punished for blackmailing content delivery platforms with withdrawing ads in response to content censorship. If you don't want to have ads on Facebook don't have ads on Facebook. But don't take your ads under the condition that some content you don't like is removed, or content you like is added. Commercial companies should have no say to what I watch, or what news I read, or movies get made, etc, using their advertising dollar. And whatever the content is pornographic, religious, right wing, left wing, communist, fascist, hate speech, or whatever, should be up to the law and the content delivery platform (but only if they do curation in general, e.g. like a news website or Netflix, not like Facebook or Twitter), to remove - not the whims of some commercial company who advertises there.