When X means cancel

I’ve told this story before, but it’s all about how I learned the subtle art of advertising sales.

When I was 22, I was working at a video film industry trade magazine called Video Business.

We were a bunch of mavericks, admirably led by the incredible publisher Brian Mulligan, Editor Sean King and Sales Director Christopher Whitaker (here we all are in a team photo, taken on the rooftop of our Soho Office)

I was part of the sales team and one of my clients was the video arm of Disney – BuenaVista.

One day, I received a phone call from my liaison at BuenaVista, saying that they had decided to put their entire budget for a new release – a very big release – into our rival.

This was a huge loss for us.

In response, I warned them there would be consequences for doing so. It turns out I was right. The consequences for this decision were a huge telling off for me, after Buena Vista went over my head and phoned the boss to appraise him of the conversation. I was lucky I wasn't sacked had it not been for an intervention from Chris.

I was told in no uncertain terms that you cannot bully advertisers into changing their mind, if they feel they want to put their budget into areas that don’t benefit you.

The best you can do, is to up your game.

If me and Elon Musk were on talking terms, I would tell him this story. Forcing CEO Linda Yaccarino to make this creepy hostage video is 100% nuts. Threatening the world’s biggest advertisers with legal action is not the way to bring advertising back to X (formerly Twitter).

And the fact that it’s called X is exactly how we got here.

X is a terrible name and if – after a year – everyone is still calling your company by the name you spent a shit-ton of money trying to un-brand, then it’s probably best to rethink that decision. But when you live in a universe entirely inhabited by sycophants, toadies and narcissists and you don’t like to hear ‘alternative’ views, then what do you expect?

Earlier this year, as a business, we decided to leave X/Twitter. It was doing The Advertist no good, was taking up too much time and I personally was getting tired of the relentless “Hello Sailor!” catfishing and racist bullshit.

Because everyone’s feed is personal, I wondered if Unilever and Mars were seeing their adverts appearing in same type of content as I was seeing?

If so – that can't be good.

A ‘Town Square’ is a wonderful idea, but let’s not forget that every town has an idiot. Social media amplifies and multiplies that idiocy. If you operate an unfettered, unchained, off-the-hook house of screaming monkeys because you believe that all voices should be heard – even the dangerous, corrupt, racist and bigoted ones, then don’t be at all surprised when companies you want to advertise alongside that content, start to look elsewhere.

No amount of phony, choreographed hand-gesturing from your CEO will bring it back.

But clearly a man with such vast wealth knows better.

In the meantime, Unilever Mars and all the other members of WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) have my full support. Because I may not be the richest man on the planet but I am someone who learns from past mistakes, and that’s priceless.