This week:
In the future?:
Thanks to all on Team Kos for the great work last night. Two new anncoulter.com advertisers, Zipzone Media Bluetooth Marketing and The Maryland Department of Tourism pulled their ads, with Zipzone Media being the first last night. Andrea from Raising Kaine also reports that Edmunds.com will pull it's ads, although they are still present on the Coulter site. Kudos to these three great organizations for their support and expeditious responses.
More on the flip:
Here's the email from the Maryland Department of Tourism:
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 12:29:43 -0400
From: Liz Fitzsimmons <LFitzsimmons@choosemaryland.org>
To: xxxx@xxxxx.org
Subject: RE: FROM WEB SITE: Contact Us
Thank you for your e-mail about viewing Maryland advertising on Anne
Coulter's web site. This purchase of advertising was done through a
third-party company, Tribal Fusion, which purchases advertising on a
variety of web sites at a reduced cost. As a purchaser, Maryland
requested those sites that match our customer profile of being 35-54 and
live within 400 miles of our state. Tribal Fusion purchased the sites
and we were not aware that Coulter's site was in the package.
We have reviewed this purchase and have instructed Tribal Fusion to
remove our ads immediately from that site as we do not advertise on
political or news-related sites.
Liz Fitzsimmons
Assistant Director
Advertising and Communications
410-767-6331
lfitzsimmons@mdwelcome.org
Maryland: Welcome
And from Zipzone Media Bluetooth Marketing:
Hello XXXX,
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. The ad is part of a
pay per click campaign with many different websites chosen automatically
by the advertising administrator. We were not aware that Ms. Coulter's
website was part of that group. We have decided to block this
particular website and our ad will no longer appear there.
It is certainly not our intention to offend anyone.
Regards,
Raymond Stone
And from Edmunds.com as reported on Raising Kaine:
We are grateful that you alerted us to this controversial Web site and we will request that our affiliate remove the Edmunds.com ad immediately.
Here is the remaining list of advertisers, with contact info, who have not yet pulled ads:
Allstate Insurance. Link.
Kodak. Link.
Starwood Hotels and Resorts (Westin Hotels). Link.
Sunrocket VOIP. Link.
Intermarkets, Inc. Link.
Walmart (scroll down for automated customer email system). Link.
Nishty Telecom. Link.
RealEstateBook.com. Link.
If you haven't yet had a chance to send a note to the advertisers above, please take a moment to share your concerns with them. Here again from yesterday's diary are some suggestions for message content:
- Keep your communications polite and respectful, but voice your concern over the company's indirect and tacit support of hate and violence-condoning speech by its advertising on anncoulter.com.
- Be sure to note that you are a customer or shareholder in the company if appropriate.
- Avoid the term "boycott" but suggest that you are less likely to conduct business with firms who support anncoulter.com.
- Ask these companies why they advertise on the site in consideration of the fact that over 40 well-known advertisers bailed in early March.
- Include links to previous news stories on the earlier Coulter advertising awareness campaign for reference. Two good links to use are the CNN story here and an excellent article in Media Post Publications here. Scroll down to story #2 for the article by Shankar Gupta
6.Remember to Look for the HR or employee recruitment person for a contact if you can find one and ask, "Do Ann Coulter's comments represent the values of your company?" The HR people as much as the marketing and Investor Relations people try and protect the stated values of a company. The marketing people look at numbers first, HR people claim to care about who they are as a company and are the enforcers when people are found to violate the internal ethics codes.
Follow up:
If you receive responses from any of these companies indicating they are pulling out (or that they decline to pull out), please post a comment here or send me an email at vdl@gmail.com. Follow up diaries will be posted listing the "good guys" who have bailed. Also, if you find other new advertisers on anncoulter.com, please email screen caps as appropriate or post them in the comments.
Many thanks again to the hundreds of Kossacks participating in this worthwhile advertiser awareness effort!