SAFETY FIRST
The 15 March Christchurch terror attack was a complex, chaotic and unprecedented situation that evolved quickly as facts of the horrific event came to light. Local media organisations NZ Marketing spoke to – MediaWorks, TVNZ, Stuff and NZME – pulled advertising from its platforms once they knew what was unfolding.
TVNZ commercial director Paul Maher says there was a constant dialogue between the chief executive, head of news and current affairs, senior teams, news team, the commercial team and content team during the attack.
“The whole business was engaged in what was the best way to represent the events that were happening and what was the best thing for advertisers in this situation,” Maher says.
“In a commercial sense we work very closely with the agencies and the advertisers to make sure we are doing what is best for them in a brand safety context.”
At Stuff, chief executive Sinead Boucher made the call straight away to pull advertising content.
“We pulled it from our home page and any story pages or videos…it’s something we’ve learnt from long experience in significant news events like this, it’s not the time to be matching advertising with important news.”
A CATALYST FOR CHANGE
In the wake of the terror attack, the Commercial Communications Council (CCC) and Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA) released a statement that encouraged all advertisers to “recognise they have choice where their advertising dollars are spent, and carefully consider, with their agency partners, where their
