Related Posts
More Posts
Sunday night to LGA, flying by Philly
Any lesbian 🐠 in chi next week?
How many hours do you actually work a week?
What’s going on at AKQA Amsterdam?
Additional Posts in Advertising
Industry-wide layoffs tomorrow or nah?
Starting my Sprinternship on Monday. Any advice?
Chip on your shoulder for the win
New to Fishbowl?
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Tobacco
Tobacco briefs just make me want to start smoking again.
I will also add this... At a former agency we learned about how Red Lobster acquires its seafood; and we pulled out of the pitch. Sometimes it’s really surprising where you find evil. We also fired a brand at a different agency shortly after because of some ‘remarks’ the CEO made on a conference call. Obviously there are ethical, non-bigoted brands out there, but it really leaves you wondering what your current clients/brands are up to behind closed doors as it were.
The world is a terrible place
—sent from a wine bar drinking a $16 cocktail while waiting for the precious lady at Book Culture to wrap my last-minute gifts.
“Multi Level Marketing” aka pyramid schemes aka Amway, etc.
The problem is their best salespeople are aging out, it’s a generational thing. They need to spend a lot of money to try to trick the savvier younger generations that their scheme isn’t harmful and evil.
This whole thread is a joke. Banks? Seriously? Are you paid in silver and you keep it buried in your backyard? The only accounts you could ever opt out of are religious/or political/governmental accounts. Otherwise you’ll be next to get cut. If you don’t like selling your soul you’re in the wrong business.
I’m dead !!!! This made my morning lol
Tobacco and tobacco-adjacent industries (i.e., Juul), guns, religious organizations (especially Catholic healthcare providers) and Republican political candidates.
Lottery... it is a tax on the ignorant.
You’re right, they should have asked you if you had a family history of gambling addicts
Why banks? I’ve always found that financial services gets a bad rap but tend to do more interesting non traditional stuff (apps, utilities, enterprise, etc). I dislike CPG products with no point of differentiation or low price points. Like soap. Or cleaning fluid.
I do like that old tagline by some British bank tho: “we never forget whose money it is.”
Anything I look into too closely.
Nestle. Tobacco. ChickFilA, or other anti-LGBTQ businesses. And political parties, since I’m a member of one and it would be a conflict of interest.
@Manager So does Hillary Clinton
Consumer pharma
@strategist 1 pharma advertising is somewhat unique to the US (in many other countries it’s not allowed) and if you think about it, it is completely immoral. Drug companies pay tons of money when they release a new formula to get people hooked on their product then stop advertising it altogether once they have a large enough consumer base who are more or less addicted and will probably keep using the drug for the rest of their life.
Conversations about potential drug use should be between a doctor and a patient. Not sold to you via an expensive ad campaign.
I’m a big homo and my agency has chick-fil-a, sooooo that’s weird at parties...
CD7 - the ECD is also gay and he said he’s going to use the money he makes working on that account to pay for his wedding 😜
Payday loan category.
Prior agency declined to pitch when it became obvious the rent-to-own brand was extending the financial part of the business into something that closely resembles payday or subprime loans. That decision pleased me.
Tobacco. Military (pacifist 👋🏼). Firearms. Anything FOX related. The Chicago Cubs.
I think I’m the only White Sox fan in my office, so I really like your response.
No clients that I’d likely encounter in my market. No major agency works with tobacco brands here (it’s too restrictive to really advertise anyways) and firearms are similarly highly regulated.
It’s an interesting moral question, but as a leftist I think comparing the relative virtue of most for-profit industries is kind of a fools errand. When it comes to individual impact, I believe a manager at Google is going to have more in common with manager at Lockheed Martin, Philip Morris or Publicis than any entry level employee at their company.
So long I choose to keep participating in this system, the best I feel I can do is keep some hard lines (military being only one I’d likely ever encounter) and worry more about advocating for my fellow coworkers and doing as ethical work as possible with whatever brands I work on.
@cw2 Calling it "facile" and "trite" is intellectually lazy and misses the point: any line we might draw is fully arbitrary. Is it honestly "worse" that tobacco has a clearer line to slow death than an airline whose product is contributing to environmental change which will make parts of the planet uninhabitable within 100 years, likely killing the people that live there? Why does that clarity or immediacy matter so much as to make it possible for you to sleep at night? It certainly doesn't matter enough to say "I work in marketing, I'm doing good for people or the planet!"
I have been personally so fucked by our health care system, I refuse to work on anything medically related. I also am suuuuper judging you for working in pharma, pharma people.
Feels like a deal with the devil. Id literally sell cigarettes before trying to get innocent people addicted to yet another pill they don’t really need.
That and any military account.
only people who work in pharma are mad and it’s probably because they wish they didn’t work in pharma :-/
I unfortunately work almost exclusively on banking, but I have refused to work on a defense contractor that designs and sells software for missile systems.
I’d love to have worked for this company. Really cool technology
Monsanto
Firearms. I freelanced on a gun manufacturer for 6 weeks bc they conned me into it before disclosing the client. I was desperate for money at the time. Never again.
Chick-fil-A. I have a problem supporting bigotry.
Trump Hotels and Resorts
1000%