Updates to Boycott of Advertisers
Monday, March 5th: On Monday, AOL Inc. and Tax Resolution Services Co. were the eighth and ninth companies to say that they will suspend advertising on Limbaugh’s program, one of the most popular radio shows in the country. As reported by the Associated Press.
AOL released a statement in an e-mail Monday, March 5th: “We have monitored the unfolding events and have determined that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments are not in line with our values,” Caroline Campbell, an AOL spokeswoman in New York, said in an e-mailed statement. “As a result we have made the decision to suspend advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/05/bloomberg_articlesM0FDK56K50YA01-M0FGP.DTL#ixzz1oHNHUvRV
Sunday, March 4th, late in the afternoon ProFlowers issued a statement on their Facebook wall suspending advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s Show
ProFlowers @Proflowers statement: http://www.facebook.com/ProFlowers
PROFLOWERS STATEMENT
At ProFlowers, our mission is to delight our customers with fresh and long lasting flowers, and that is our singular focus each and every day. We do not base our advertising decisions to align with any particular political view or opinion as our employees and customers are as diverse as the USA. Mr. Limbaugh’s recent comments went beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company. As such, ProFlowers has suspended advertising on The Rush Limbaugh radio program.
After Rush Limbaugh’s statement released,
Carbonite tweeted: We are immediately discontinuing our advertisements on Limbaugh. Here is a statement from CEO David Friend: cbnt.it/x4788a
Saturday, March 3rd, Rush Limbaugh released a weak statement apologizing for his poor choice of words. Note, he did not apologize for calling Sandra Fluke a slut or prostitute, only his poor attempt at humor. Also note, the radio talk show did not verbalize the statement, but released it in his website.
This was obviously an attempt to stem the tide of the growing list of advertisers that were jumping ship. Some of his biggest advertisers most likely contacted him to issue a statement so they could save face. Will social media crusaders continue the drum beat of boycott?
Citrix Systems @citrix announced late on Friday in a tweet: We have listened to our customers & have decided to cease our advertising on The Rush Limbaugh Show immediately.https://www.facebook.com/Citrix
LegalZoom @LegalZoom announced Friday afternoon in tweets to several twitter inquiries: As of today, LegalZoom has suspended all advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show.I can find no specific press release. Numerous tweets from LegalZoom @LegalZoom were directed in reply to specific twitter handles.
After 135 days of no tweets from AutoZone @autozone, they found someone at their office who knows how to use Twitter. On Friday they tweeted: Regarding inquiries about our ad policy, #AutoZone policy is to not advertise with any politically focused personalities or shows.
Not only has Social Media forced them to drop ads on Rush Limbaugh, it has forced them to change advertising policy. High Five Tweeters.
**The local stations that air Rush Limbaugh sell advertising during his show to local and national companies. Some of these companies may have specifically requested that their spot run during the Limbaugh show. Other advertisers just buy a certain number of spots per day without specifying when they are aired.
@jrowe2 alerted me that NBC Nightly News reported that Auto Zone also pulled advertising from the Rush Limbaugh show Friday afternoon. That makes Four.
Friday at 1:06 Quicken Loans Kelly@ Quicken Loans tweeted: Due to continued inflammatory comments– along w/valuable feedback from clients & team members– QL has suspended ads on Rush Limbaugh program
Friday 10:23 am from @sleepnumbersara representing The Sleep Number Bed tweeted:Recent comments by Rush Limbaugh do not align w/our values, so we made decision to immediately suspend all advertising on that program.
@LendingTree tweeted Friday morning: LendingTree does not sponsor the Rush Limbaugh program – a few sites have incorrectly listed LendingTree as an active sponsor.
The Sleep Train officially announces is pulling advertisements from Rush Limbaugh.
@theSleepTrain tweeted at approximately 6am: We don’t condone negative comments directed toward any group. In response, we are currently pulling our ads from Rush with Rush Limbaugh.
At 3:01 am in the morning @ProFlowers was still working on damage control with this tweet: We would like to assure you that we do not endorse the views expressed by Rush LImbaugh. We
Original Post
Rush Limbaugh ignited a firestorm of protest when he called Sandra Fluke a slut on national radio last Wednesday, February 29. By Thursday afternoon a “Boycott Rush Limbaugh” advertiser list had been developed. The delay in assembling the list might have been that few if any of the organizers actually listen to the Rush show and had no idea who the advertisers were.
Of the 14 identified advertisers, 9 of them had twitter accounts that could be tweeted to: , @ProFlowers,@theSleepTrain, @eHarmony, @Carbonite, @oreck, @autozone, @LegalZoom, @citrix, @LendingTree
Three of the companies were actually responding to twitter requests to boycott the Rush Limbaugh show by Thursday evening: @ProFlowers,@theSleepTrain, @eHarmony
@ProFlowers at 7:01 pm tweeted: We would like to assure you that we do not endorse the views expressed by Rush LImbaugh. We understand your concerns and value your feedback
@theSleepTrain at 9:22 pm tweeted: Thanks for your concern. We are currently pulling all of our ads from Rush Limbaugh.
@eHarmony at 7:04 pm tweeted: We’ve never paid for ads on Limbaugh show. We’re looking into the matter of “network buys” & will let you know what we discover.
An employee, and not a company represented, of The Sleep Number Bed, wrote:
@sleepnumbersara tweeted at 9pm We take ur concerns seriously & will share ur tweets w marketing leaders. Can also email us: publicrelations@selectcomfort.com #sleepnumber
Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the companies that were responding probably have the highest identification and interaction with women: Flowers, Beds and Love. All of those also happen to have at least tenuous connections to the use of birth control, which Sandra Fluke was prohibited from speaking about at a congressional hearing.
Social Media, and Twitter in particular, was creating an acknowledged public relations nightmare for three of the companies. To their credit, they were responding to tweets long past 5 pm. One can only imagine the frantic and fervent phone calls being made between company executives.
It will be interesting to see if the twitter accounts of the other companies respond to any of the boycott tweets.
Will Social Media have the same effect on Rush Limbaugh advertisers as it did under the Susan G. Komen – Planned Parenthood disaster? Time will tell but women seem to be particularly galvanized at this point in time in response to the assault on their liberties.
Social Media is Catching up to Main Stream Media Advertising
I started listening to Rush Limbaugh when he was on KFBK in Sacramento in the ’80’s. Even then he engendered constant controversy. While I don’t listen to him at all, I know that his words inspire a visceral response from opponents.
There have been a few occasions in the past when he has crossed the line in comments similar to the Sandra Fluke “Slut” comment. However, while Rush has not changed, the electronic tools to communicate with his advertisers has. Past boycotts of Rush’s advertisers withered as people just where not inclined to sit on the phone to lodge a complaint or write a letter.
Even when the campaigns were successful in organizing people, the advertisers did not need to reveal how many letters or phone calls they received. In essence, they could spin the consumer response and continue with business as usual.
With social media, all the comments and the numbers are visible from tweets, Facebook posts, and web traffic. In addition, it is far easier to mobilize people with social media and they need to expend little energy to log a protest.
The quick response from people who use social media to voice their complaints and opinion can no longer be brushed under the rug by advertisers. If video killed the radio star, perhaps twitter is killing radio mouth.
What is the appeal of Rush Limbaugh? Rush puts words to the prurient thoughts of his predominantly white male audience. Even 20 years ago I found his radio show not to be family friendly. Rush often times would discuss sexual topics that children, if they were present in the car or house, should not be exposed to. He was actually, and obviously still is, contributing to the early sexualization of our children.
In my conversations with other men, they would often giggle or chuckle at the topics and the language Rush used. Rush was able to say in public what they could not. He made it easy for other men to discuss sexual issues under the guise of, “Did you hear what Rush said?” In this manner, Rush was able to legitimize some of their own sexual fantasies.
So it was with no great surprise to me that Rush called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. It is the fantasy of many of his old white listeners to be with a young woman. Although this time, women using social media, may have finally pushed Rush back over the line into civil discourse if he wants to continue his radio show?
We are immediately discontinuing our advertisements on Limbaugh. Here is statement from Carbonite CEO David Friend: cbnt.it/x4788a
We are immediately discontinuing our advertisements on Limbaugh. Here is statement from Carbonite CEO David Friend: cbnt.it/x4788a
Here is statement from Carbonite CEO David Friend: cbnt.it/x4788a