#StopHateForProfit : Influencers’ response

Since 19 June, more than 400 leading brands, including Adidas, Unilever and now Coca-Cola, have responded to The North Face’s call and joined the #StopHateForProfit movement.
Carried out by several NGOs, this initiative has become global and has led several advertisers to suspend their advertising expenses on social media during the month to come. And the movement could last even longer.
But why such a boycott ? This campaign stands as protest against Facebook’s content policy, which is deemed too permissive, especially when it comes to President Trump’s comments about the Black Lives Matter movement.

All those brands are not only asking for more accountability and transparency from those social platforms, but are also expecting concrete action in this fight against fake news and hateful content.
Ahead of presidential elections in America, the stakes are high for Facebook – a firm that is already entangled in data sharing scandals and accused of influencing elections. Since the movement started, the Californian company has allegedly lost 7 Billion dollars.

That is the new crucial issue for all marketing departments. Today, brands are aware of their social value and are not afraid to capitalise on it in order to put pressure on social platforms.
In this time of pandemic and intense social selling, advertisers cannot waist the opportunity of achieving their objectives through social media. To do so, they must be able to offer their online community a trustworthy environment and a healthy digital relationship. Earlier in the process, they must be able to count on reliable partners that will protect their interest and prevent any online campaigns from damaging their image.
If platforms are now at the eye of the storm, those issues actually concern the entire digital marketing sector.
When it comes to influence, the value of our counselling practice lies within our ability to build healthy digital ecosystems around brands, that all share values of respect but also empathy, and that foster diversity in conversations with the community.
Since we are the ones in charge of crafting and promoting the image of our clients, it is our duty to expect that our business partners will report, restrict or delete any explicit content that could harm advertisers’ image or integrity.

L’Oreal recently announced that the authenticity and behaviour of 90% of the prescribers they work with were being verified – even if that means providing a new budget to carry out those investigations. This shows just how thorny the issue is. Background check is genuinely becoming the most essential part of our job. The relationship that we maintain with our client is based on this trust. This process should thus be much way more integrated in the best practices of influence agencies. And if you still have the slightest doubt, ask yourself the question – who are you going to trust with your clients’ trust ?