C Squared chairman and editor-in-chief Charlie Crowe considers how international advertisers are connected to the recent events in Paris, and the role the industry plays in the on-going battle to preserve freedom of speech across the world.

A few years after Charlie Hebdo magazine was re-launched in 1992, I interviewed one of their staff for a story idea about the often uneasy alliance between editor and ad manager.

Was it ever possible, I wondered, that such controversy-courting titles like theirs could ever build an advertising business? Could the irreverence and anti-establishment ethos of satirical writing sit alongside the corporate business of advertising sales? Were there any examples of positive symbiosis between the writers in the flak jackets and those salesmen in Armani suits?

Anyone working in ad sales, especially in print, will recognise the tension between those brands on the schedule which try to avoid controversy and the journalists on the floor below who are motived by courting it. Yet, in these days of content marketing, this concept of ‘church and state’ feels like it is from bygone era.

As the industry moves towards programmatic trading – where advertisers buy audiences in real-time rather than acquiring a long-term association to a specific media company (and where many media companies are even losing control of their own inventory) – the notion of a ‘correct editorial environment’ seems almost quaint.

But as brands themselves start to behave as publishers – and companies such as Vibrant, NewsCred, Outbrain, Percolate and Nativo begin to build up their presence across the world – perhaps it is time for advertisers to consider the issues aroused by last week’s atrocity and to stand publicly in solidarity for the editorial values that have caused millions of people to take to the streets over the past few days.

Welcoming place

Charlie Hebdo wasn’t exactly a welcoming place for advertisers, at least when I discovered the title. It was – and I hope will continue to be – a very unique mix of left-wing radicalism, intellectual polemic and smut. It was a deranged comic book, daring its readers to take offence.

In this respect it is like a mix between the US magazine The Onion, the German title Titanic and UK adult comic Viz. And, yet, although Charlie Hebdo struck a very extreme – and uniquely French – tone, it stood for the same values of free speech and journalistic freedom shared by all media enterprises across the liberal democratic world.

It is with these media companies that we still do business today – buying their audiences and, crucially, financially supporting the ethos of freedom and supporting brave and pioneering journalists around the world.

In this new world of social sharing and consumer-generated content there are still media vendors who have teams of great journalists, an editorial code and a proud history of ‘speaking truth to power’. Around these values audiences coalesce. Once upon a time, pioneering newspapers and innovative broadcasters underpinned a nascent trade in media space and time that ultimately created the media agency.

In fact, advertising was a powerful subsidy in the development of a free press. With the revenues from advertising, great journalists had more resources and larger audiences, who in turn benefited from cheaper cover prices and free-to-air programming.

Advertising helped develop a plural media environment, which in turn raised knowledge, shared global stories and built our understanding of the world. Western press – built upon freedom of expression and choice – even succeeded in penetrating a concrete wall and unifying a whole continent.

Democratic ethos

I don’t think it is fanciful to say that advertising itself – and, yes, even the media buyers – share some credit in establishing the principle of a free press and the ethos of democracy in the western world. This is a fact often overlooked by the media legislators who seek to cut and control advertising, not realising that the free flow of commerce is inextricably connected to the free flow of information.

We often talk about “responsibility” in advertising – but advertising has always been responsible, in the sense that it is the mechanism of subsidising new forms of expression and journalists who make a difference. If great information is a public service, then advertising does almost as much as our taxes.

Since the tragedy, my thoughts have turned to the many media owners who we do business with at M&M, many of which will be suppliers of the agencies and brands reading this article. It seems appropriate now to remind the advertising industry that its subsidy to free speech has impact beyond just promoting brands and selling more goods and services.

CNN – a regular on international schedules – was the first international news organisation to make it to Chibok, the remote Nigerian village from where 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped. It took CNN’s team four days to reach the village as they negotiated countless checkpoints, begged armed police to accompany them as they diverted around Boko Haram hotspots.

Another broadcaster – Ann Soy of BBC World – braved gunfire to bring us the news of the Westgate Mall attack in Kenya. With services in both Ukrainian and Russian, Euronews has weathered attacks from both those nations in order to provide us with a balanced view. The New York Times took great risks when it exposed the financial affairs of Wen Jiabao in China.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek challenged many people’s notions of homosexuality with its piece on Apple’s Tim Cook (“Tim Cook Speaks Up) last October, and this was the same organisation who gave a platform to journalist Cam Simpson and his work exposing illegal tin mining in Apple’s supply chain.

This followed a Bloomberg News/Bloomberg Markets exposé of the illegal mining of tungsten and how the proceeds fund the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) – a story which gained the writers the Robert F. Kennedy Award.

Show of support

Clearly, these examples do not touch upon Islam, nor adopt the same tone as Charlie Hebdo. But they are all part of the same spectrum of activity. And it is not just international media brands that house such brilliant journalists and who are supported by advertising. It is indeed moving to see titles such as FAZ, Le Monde, Liberation, The New Yorker and The Guardian among others make such public shows of support.

Our thoughts at C Squared are this week with our French colleagues and all the brave media brands we connect to across the world.

And so, when you next negotiate that ad or scrutinise the schedule, think of the collateral societal benefit you are making. While the likes of Buzzfeed, Mashable and Vice are undoubtedly loved by media buyers as massive volume suppliers of fresh young audiences, their intrinsic values aren’t founded upon journalistic integrity, but rather the primacy of the algorithm.

These will not be these kinds of companies who will this week be discussing their security arrangements or considering how far they can cover religious and political issues without inciting fundamentalist terrorists and endangering their staff. The advertising industry is truly connected to this global debate. And it can confidently claim from its past and looking into its future: “We are Charlie.”