I thought I would share my experience of trying to pressure advertisers not to place their advertisement's on Glen Beck's hateful and divisive show. As part of the progressive call to action posted by Wikoogle
Motivated by his diary I chose to contact Pfizer since I am a shareholder. The following details the exchange:
I initially posted a comment on their corporate website asking them not to advertise on Glen Beck's show citing the following comment he made on the show:
"Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary"
I was limited to 500 characters, so I focused on the most controversial of his comments, though I had many to chose from.
This was the lame response I got from them:
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Pfizer [email:pfizer@pfizer.com] wrote:
Dear XXXX,
Thank you for taking the time to contact Pfizer. We received your email regarding advertising placement and we appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective and policies on advertising with you.
In placing our advertising, we choose programs that are most likely to reach people who might benefit from messages about our medicines and the diseases they treat, while meeting our high standards for ethics and quality. We do not participate in or control the programming decisions made by a network and, as such, please understand that our advertising placement in a show is not in any way an endorsement of the show’s content or editorial position.
Our main focus is to make all consumers aware of important information about health and wellness and the best way to do this is through a broad range of advertising environments.
We hope this clarifies our advertising policies and guidelines for you.
Kind Regards,
Pfizer
I disagreed with their justifications and sent the following response:
I reject the implied assertion that you cannot reach this audience unless you advertise on Glen Beck's politically controversial program. Fox viewers that watch Glen Beck also watch other Fox programs where you are certain to reach them. Given the myriad programs you can choose to advertise on and still reach this audience, I can only conclude that you endorse the views presented by Glen Beck on his show. As a shareholder, I ask that you not endorse his insensitive, hateful and politically controversial views and instead find other programs less controversial to advertise on.
Sincerely,
XXXXX
I encourage everyone to send complaints to Pfizer regarding their current policy of endorsing the views of Glen Beck.