Facebook boycott gathers strength as advertising giants climb aboard

The social network is becoming a toxic brand that other brands are reluctant to associate with, writes James Moore. How will Mark Zuckerberg respond?

Under pressure: Advertisers are fleeing Facebook. How will Mark Zuckerberg respond? (Reuters)

When it was just Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s and The North Face, Facebook could maybe just shrug its shoulders.

Now, not so much. Turns out those brands were the first little snowballs rolling down the mountain that you see before an avalanche.

The avalanche is now underway.

Starbucks, Beam Suntory, Coca-Cola, Diageo (multiple brand name alcoholic drinks), Honda America, Levi’s, Starbucks, Verizon, and Ben & Jerry’s owner Unilever have joined in for the rest of 2020.

That’s an impressive roll call of big brands with big advertising budgets.

Some of them have, it’s true, been wary of explicitly joining the #StopHateforProfit campaign that got the ball rolling with its demand for action on the hateful content that has proliferated on social media. But they don’t necessarily need to sign on their names on the dotted line.

Their dollars, or the lack of them, are sufficient to make the point for them.

So what’s Mark Zuckerberg going to do? Make no mistake, he’s the person that counts here. There have been reports about him being “persuaded” not to act on some of Donald Trump’s more incendiary posts, but I would take them with a pinch of salt. Zuckerberg is not only the founder but the ruler of one of the world’s most powerful companies – he runs the thing, he has voting control of the shares. It’s his show.

But even his power has its limits. The campaign may be exposing them.

Wall Street has certainly woken up to what’s been going on, with Facebook shares finding themselves under pressure.

The company held a conference call at the end of last week to try and turn the tide. It talked about a “trust deficit” and sent emails.

The problem is that it all looks like marketing and responding to skilled marketeers with something they can easily recognise isn’t the smartest of tactics.

Facebook is in real danger of becoming a toxic brand, something companies don’t want to be associated with because it has the potential to inflict collateral damage on their own brands. Divisiveness doesn’t sell well. Inclusion does. Who knew?

That Zuckerberg has managed to damage what he created to such an extent is quite astonishing.

Others, notably Google and YouTube, have escaped some of the advertisers ire by navigating the situation with a degree more adroitness. Google isn’t exactly a model of enlightened corporate governance but it does have a few more checks and balances than Facebook does.

Maybe it’s showing the benefit of having more than just the one voice with real clout. The most effective leaders are those who are willing to encourage others to express dissenting views and who are capable of recognising when they may be onto something.

It’s worth pointing out that even now the majority of big advertisers are still with Facebook, albeit queasily in some cases. They continue to pour billions into its coffers.

Campaigns such as #deletefacebook have had only a limited impact on users.

Unilver, the owner of Ben & Jerry’s, has followed the ice-cream maker in pulling its advertising from Facebook until the end of the year (Getty) (Getty Images)

The company still provides an incredibly powerful tool through which companies can reach customers.

But, given the controversies Facebook has become involved in, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see more of them questioning their support of the platform while it becomes the dumping ground for hateful and mendacious rhetoric from a US president who hasn’t so much crossed the line as he has stomped all over it, and others.

Facebook’s critics are increasingly on the march.

In cleaving to Trump and the Trumpkins, in bending its “community standards” so they can indulge their worst instincts, it is emboldening those among them who think this is a company with more power than is healthy and needs its wings clipping.

Trump rode a social media wave into power. He could just as easily ride one out. He looks to be in trouble, and a new Democrat-controlled administration may be a lot less friendly to the social network.