Woman advertising faggots at Fanny’s Café banned from Google over ‘offensive’ language – Wales Online

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A woman advertising faggots at her café called Fanny’s says Google removed the post – because it was ‘offensive’.

Jo Evans-Pring, 63, was promoting her award-winning funky retro music diner ‘Fanny’s Rest Stop Café’.

Self-confessed technophobe Jo turned to pal Chris Barnbrook for help – and the pair set up a website, Facebook page – and even began paying for adverts on Google.

Within just a few weeks, the mum-of-four, of Newport found that her business sales were soaring once again.

But one day after Jo posted a picture of faggots with peas and onion gravy on her website, she got an email from Google stating the advert had been removed.

In the email, Google cited their content policy explaining not to post anything that could be construed as “inappropriate and offensive content”.

Jo said that she was “absolutely startled by what’s happened” and claims “the world’s gone totally mad if people are getting worked up over that”.

She claimed: “People need to spend their time dealing with real problems, not things like whether or not the word ‘faggots’ when selling that meal is hateful.

“There comes a time where businesses need to reinvent themselves, and – after eight years of running the shop – I decided now was one of those times.

“I’m a complete technophobe, so I asked Chris to take care of posting stuff on the Internet for me.

“We set up a website, and a Facebook page, to attract the locals to the café .

“Fanny’s has been doing really well because of the Internet campaign. We’ve noticed a big change in the past couple of weeks.

“People have been coming from a little further afield because we’re paying for adverts when they google for places to eat.

“They’ve loved coming to Fanny’s because it’s fun and retro.

“I posted an advert on the website for Fanny’s faggots with peas and onion gravy, a pretty traditional meal and one of my favourites, on the 27th.

“But the next day I got an email from Google saying they’d removed a post of ours, and then referred us to their posting contents policy.

“Me and Chris had a look, and realised they’d moved the faggots one – and we couldn’t think it was for any reason other than it having the word ‘faggots’ in it.”

Fanny’s Rest Stop Café was even awarded a Certificate of Excellence 2019 prize, and has been scoring a consistent four-and-a-half stars, on TripAdvisor.

Faggots is a traditional dish, long popular in the English Midlands and South and Mid Wales, made from minced off-cuts and offal.

But the word ‘faggot’ was misconstrued by Google administrators to refer to the pejorative term of abuse referring to gay men.

Jo’s email read: “Your post was taken down.

“Recently, a post was removed from your Business Profile. To help ensure your posts create a positive experience for users, please review our content policy.”

Google can unilaterally remove content its administrators deem “inappropriate and offensive” – according to its content policy.

Their content policy page states: “Published content cannot promote hatred or incited violence against individuals or groups based on ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, sexual orientation or gender identity.

“Content cannot be used to harass or bully individuals, including direct physical threats or exposing private information that could be used to carry out implied threats.

“Content that contains obscene, profane or offensive language or gestures.

“Images or video published on this service shouldn’t include nudity or sex acts.

“Content cannot include profanity, slang terms that are sexually graphic and offensive, terms that are common signals for pedophilia, content that promotes pedophilia, bestiality, sexual violence or content that promotes escort services or other services that may be interpreted as providing sexual acts in exchange for compensation.

“Links to adult content are not permitted.”

Chris said: “I thought it would be ideal to promote the café to locals who might not have heard of Fanny’s Rest Stop Café.

“Not initially realising the power of Google and social media, Jo decided to invest a small amount in online promotion.

“This all worked very well and her business has been flourishing since.

“But after we posted the picture of the faggots dish, we got that Google mail saying they’d taken the content down.

“After going over their content policy, the only thing I could see was that it might have been thought of as obscene, profane, or offensive.

“We thought it might be for the word ‘faggots’ – which we felt was a bit ironic, as the café anyway is called Fanny’s.

“We were more amused by this more than anything else, but we’re finding it a little concerning now for what this means for businesses if words are policed.

Jo, who admits finding the row initially funny, has become infuriated by the decision, saying: “We were totally sidelined by it, to be honest.

“At first, we found it kind of funny. But ultimately we’re both furious by the decision.

“I don’t really associate the word ‘faggots’ with anything offensive, and yet someone has made a decision that’s affecting my livelihood.

“Thinking of all the nasty stuff that’s on the Internet, why are they wasting their time with Fanny’s Rest Stop Café?

“We’re just asking – what’s the world coming to?”

This content was originally published here.

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Walmart ditches advertising for violent games, but guns are still in stock

Finally, children won’t have to look at bloody or brutal games on the way to picking up their assault rifles. Thank god. We’re safe.

Last Saturday, a man opened fire on Walmart customers in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 and wounding 24 others. Hours later, another gunman killed 9 more in Dayton, Ohio. As has become frustratingly the norm in these occurrences, the finger of blame hasn’t been pointed at, say, the mass proliferation of guns in the country, or (in El Paso’s case particularly) the rise in hostile anti-immigration sentiment.

Not at all. Following the tragedies, President Trump placed the blame on mental illness and “gruesome and grisly video games”.

It looks like Walmart caught the memo.

Freelance writer Kenneth Shepard has been circulating literature internally released by Walmart. The letter, “Immediate Action: Remove Signing and Displays Referencing Violence,” instructs employees to take down displays showing violent movies, hunting videos and footage of violent video games.

Apparently Walmart is telling its employees to take down displays that show violent video games, specifically shooters, as well as movies and hunting videos. pic.twitter.com/2N3t4B86tf

— Kenneth Shepard (@shepardcdr) August 7, 2019

It also instructs staff to take down demo console units, noting Xbox and PS4 stands as those more likely to be offering violent play. It’s unclear how many stores are affected. However, an anonymous source told Vice that this is indeed official literature being distributed by the retailer.

“I immediately threw it away because it’s obviously a way to shift the blame from the real problem regarding the mass shootings. I didn’t get to confirm this yesterday but they aren’t doing anything about the sales of guns and ammo in the store.”

USA Today was able to confirm that (predictably) the store’s gun sale policy has not changed. Of course.

The games industry has its own problems with guns and violence. Publishers often fund arms manufacturers through licenses after all. But it’s hard to see a move to erase all mention of violence from a store – without withdrawing the sale of weapons themselves – as anything but an attempt to wash over the tragedy.

Guns are fine, says Walmart. Just don’t think about what they do.

The post Walmart ditches advertising for violent games, but guns are still in stock appeared first on VG247.

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Vet left dog to die alone overnight despite advertising ’24-hour care’ – Lincolnshire Live

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A dog was left on its own to die overnight in a vets that was advertised as providing 24-hour care.

Penny and Anthony O’Callaghan took their beloved Kiwi to the Riverside Veterinary Practice in Spalding after they feared he was suffering from an urgent stomach condition.

The vet was able to carry out a successful emergency operation on the 11-year-old German Shepherd–Wolfhound cross.

But he was then left to recuperate from the surgery on his own for more than seven hours overnight.

Kiwi was found dead the following morning, leaving the O’Callaghan’s devastated.

Elizabeth Law, the vet who carried out the operation, was reprimanded by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons following the dog’s death.

They said it was a ‘serious mistake that she made in failing to ensure that Kiwi was checked or monitored overnight’.

The dog’s owners told a disciplinary hearing that one of the reasons that they chose her practice was that it advertised itself as a 24/7 operation.

At the time of the incident, the Riverside Practice stated on its Facebook page: “24-hour care is provided at our practice, with our vets.”

A Royal College disciplinary panel said Miss Law – who had been a vet for nine years – had made a ‘serious mistake’ which resulted in a ‘serious lapse of clinical judgement’.

However, the practice was cleared of dishonestly claiming that it offered 24/7 service.

The vet argued that this simply meant vets were available to be called out at any hour, rather than they were permanently staffed around the clock.

Mrs O’Callaghan said: “We have been pet owners for 20 years and we know all the right questions to ask when we sign up to a surgery.

“The crucial thing is that my pets can be offered 24-hour care.

“Riverside advertised that they provide care 24/7, but Kiwi was left by himself after a major operation.”

She believes that if a vet had been there to look after Kiwi, he would not have died that night.

“I was re-assured that everything was successful, and I slept peacefully that night – I couldn’t wait to wake up and call Riverside to check on him and bring him home,” she said.

“They called me the following morning to tell me he had died overnight. I was devastated and angry.

“I was absolutely heartbroken, and I am disappointed that Riverside have been let off the hook without any serious action being taken.

“It makes me very concerned that other vets offer this service but in reality it is only 24-hour response – not 24-hour treatment.

“We trusted the vets completely and left our pet in their care.”

The disciplinary panel was told that Kiwi’s owners had taken the dog to the Riverside practice during the evening of November 7, 2017.

Both of them suspected that he was suffering from a condition called ‘bloat’ – where the stomach fills with gas and can become bloated.

The 11-year-old dog was treated and operated that evening before a nurse made a final check on him at around 12.30am.

“(She) felt he was stable and could remain on fluids until the following morning,” the judgement, which was published last week, says. “Kiwi was left alone overnight, during which time no visits or checks were made to assess and/or monitor his condition.”

Kiwi was found dead in his kennel at 7.45am the following morning. Miss Law rang the O’Callaghan’s to break the bad news.

“Mrs O’Callaghan asked if Kiwi had been on his own when he died, and (Miss Law) said yes,” the judgement states. “Mrs O’Callaghan was extremely upset and could not continue the call.

“Mr O’Callaghan was very upset and angry at what had occurred and asked (Miss Law) why she had left a dog alone after life-threatening surgery. She said they were a small practice and they did not have the staff.

“He said that he did not care and that they advertise themselves as providing 24-hour care.”

Professor John Williams, an expert witness at the hearing, said that Miss Law’s decision to leave Kiwi alone “fell below the standards of a reasonably competent veterinary surgeon”.

The panel agreed with this assessment.

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Riverside owner Julia Creese was also cleared of any wrongdoing surrounding the death. It ruled that the practice had not advertised itself as offering 24/7 staffing.

A written statement by Mrs Creese said: “Although we do offer a 24-hour emergency service at this practice, rather than using a designated out of hours provider, we are not a hospital and don’t have staff on site overnight.

“Details of the level of cover that we provide is available to read in the waiting room on our practice noticeboard.

“We did not advertise the practice to have staff on site 24 hours a day and I do not know why the O’Callaghans thought this was the case.”

This content was originally published here.

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The phenomenon & frailties of the Watford Advertising Course, in leader Tony Cullingham’s own words

After almost 30 years at the helm, the unassuming Tony Cullingham has sailed a small practical course in advertising into near-mythical status. What’s his secret – and what’s his future in a digital world?

If advertising is a form of sorcery, and many would have you believe it is, then magic is made just off the A411 in West Herts College. Tony Cullingham’s Watford Advertising Course has run almost entirely unchanged in curriculum since 1989, periodically destroying the confidence of young graduates who think they have talent only to build them up again into substantive, employable creatives.

Watford’s list of alumni reads like an illustrious who’s who of the industry; past students include Grey’s Caroline Pay, Mr President’s Jon Gledstone, Lucky Generals’ Danny Brooke-Taylor, CHI&Partners’ Yan Elliott, 18 Feet & Rising’s Anna Carpen and Saatchi & Saatchi’s Rob Potts. The Creative Circle’s chief executive, Jeremy Green, recalls an audience audibly gasping when a roll call of Cullingham’s protégés was read aloud at the organisation’s awards last year.

Roughly 15 students are taken on each year after completing a seemingly bizarre test, which, Pay remembers, reduced her to tears with questions such as ‘What does the future hold for jelly?’ and ‘Why should you never underestimate a handsome bear?’ They undertake five months of rigorous training before being let loose on placements in the agencies of London, in order to develop and showcase their skills at the heart of the job market.

Danny Brooke-Taylor, founding partner at Lucky Generals

“Tony taught me two things: to keep digging to find the thing that really matters to people, then to make that thing as beautiful, funny, noisy and heart-breaking as you can.”

In training Cullingham still uses the same analogue methods that he developed pre-internet. Briefs come in fast and ideas are dashed, hard. Work is more likely to end up at the bottom of a bin than dashed in red pen, and crying is par for the course at the beginning of each new school year.

“Tony has this great but intimidating line about working your brain harder than any formal education ever has,” recalled alumnus Paddy Fraser, creative director at CP&B.  “And he’s right. Our heads hurt like fuck for the first few months. The man rewires your brain. And does it whilst gleefully destroying your ideas daily.”

When it comes to the daily pitching rounds, Cullingham pins all the work to the board and tears down every idea that doesn’t meet the brief he set an hour ago. Out of 100 bright ideas, he’s happy to leave – on average – just one pinned to the board.

Sometimes he doesn’t leave any.

“The advertising world is tough,” Cullingham says. “The students have to produce a lot of ideas quickly and they have to be good. The ability to bounce back is important. I need students that can be rejected five or six times a day and go, ‘so what?’”

While screens proliferate modern agency life, the course’s director is a paper evangelist. Each cohort goes through stacks of the stuff due to Cullingham’s belief that creatives need to cut themselves off from all communication technology in order to generate good ideas.

“Creativity is best when you lock yourself away from your phone, so you’re not getting email alerts or texts from your friends,” he asserts. “Paper and a pen in your hand – that’s all you need.

“Technology should only come into being when your idea demands it. It’s also a good inspirer – when you’re not thinking you can use [the internet to] watch films and view art. But it creates lazy creative, and I think should be churning out energetic creatives that don’t rely on technology to develop ideas or look to be inspired in that way. Inspiration comes from life. That’s what they should be engaged with.”

Caroline Pay, joint chief creative officer at Grey London

“Tony taught me a million things. Kill your babies. It’s not personal. Grow a thick skin. Read the room. Never give up. You get back double what you put in. No puns. No borrowed interest. Tony knows EXACTLY what he’s doing. If you can’t crack it, crack something else, then come back and crack it later.

“Get up and out and chat and see and listen and learn. Inspiration never comes from a blank sheet of paper.”

This dedication to analogue borders the religious, and as time goes by and the course’s curriculum remains essentially unaffected by the course of time, it’s difficult to marry the digital workplaces most students will enter into with an education delivered on Post-It Notes and reams of A4.

Grappling with the new technological skills that marketers now require is a challenge most acutely felt by academic institutions, according to Douglas West, a professor of marketing at King’s College London, who believes training courses are “slightly on the back foot, in that the industry reacts much more quickly than we can react”.

“It takes us about a year to plan a course, test the market for a course and sort out the content, and it takes a second year to market that course and make sure that we have the appropriate people teaching the course,” he said, when giving oral evidence to Parliament’s Select Committee on Communications. “The course will start in the third year. So our planning cycle for MScs and degrees and so forth is, inevitably, on the back foot.”

Andy Jex, chief creative officer at TBWA\London

“Tony taught me about lateral thinking: thinking differently, surprising, delighting and emoting with people through the power of ideas – never through the power of TV or a press ad. What he teaches is as relevant today as it was all those years ago.”

Cullingham – who teaches the course himself with only the support of one part-time tutor – does not have to worry about finding teachers. There’s also no need for him to test the waters with new content because his course is underpinned by a set of immovable, almost ideological truths that he hopes will go unchanged in spite of digital’s entrenchment in marketing.

“I like to think every single one of my students finds work very easily and that’s because there’s still the demand out there for ideas people,” he says. “I find the demand for my students is greater than it’s ever been, because there are more channels out there, more companies ­and more creative leaders that want ideas people.”

Stuart Harkness, executive creator director at 72&Sunny Amsterdam

“Watford moulds your brain in weird and wonderful ways and teaches folk how to think laterally, have fun, and believe in six-word briefs rather than pages of waffle.”

Constantly talking up the value of the ethereal idea does, of course, tend to veer into idealism. And there are the pragmatists in advertising – usually of the suited variety – that deem his methods to be out-dated in a time of data analysis and multitudes of developing digital channels.

“I think some people see me as irrelevant,” Cullingham says, when asked what he reckons the London ad scene makes of him. “They think I’m old fashioned and traditional and I’m not very good with digital media and I’ve been doing the job for too long. Some think that I don’t have any liking for craft, which is completely rubbish.

“But some people see me as really relevant, and I’d rather be at two ends of the spectrum. Anything in between is not right for me – that’s average.”

Watford alumnus Ben Tollett, now Adam&Eve/DDB’s executive creative director, counters that while the methods in the classroom may be theoretical, “Watford students spend most of their time inside agencies like ours, learning on the job, working on live briefs”.

“So I don’t really see how the course could be any more bang up to date,” he says, “unless Tony has invented a time machine that he’s using to send his students to work in the Soho ad scene circa 1989.”

Ben Tollet, executive creator director at Adam&Eve/DDB

“The main thing we learnt was how to come up with lots of advertising ideas. And then we learnt how to judge which of those ideas were any good. And then we learnt how to come up with even more ideas once we’d rejected the entire first batch. These are skills I now use day in day out.

“Of course we also learnt lots of other important stuff like tenacity, doggedness and how to survive on baked beans on toast.”

Looking ahead, the course of steady Watford’s future will be dependent on external factors. Cullingham has honestly admitted in the past that the scheme is receiving fewer applications than it used to, attributing the drop off to the rising costs of living in London. He’s also posed the idea of an industry funding system that would help those who struggle with the £4,000 fees and rent in the capital finance the course.

But now, his tone is one of unambiguous frustration.

“This year I have 12 students and I’m falling below my break even target, which is 16,” he says via email, a few months after first speaking to The Drum. “Kids just don’t have the dosh. Kids from Swansea, Glasgow and Hartlepool have even less dosh.

“I’ve always tried to recruit students from less privileged backgrounds [because] that’s what the industry needs and that is the audience I want to see in front of me. But that creates huge problems for me – I have some students this year who can’t afford the train fare to get to London for an agency workshop.”

watf

Cullingham also believes plans to make his course more international are being scuppered by the Home Office’s student immigration policy.

“I actually recruited an Indian chap from Mumbai, a Russian and a Singaporean but they couldn’t get visas,” he recalls. “I think there’s a real problem at the moment in terms of my goals and trying to make the industry more diverse. I try and look worldwide for creative talent but that’s been constrained at the moment.”

The Creative Circle’s plans to launch a free ad school have “put the worry worms” in the “Watford head” of the industry veteran. He’s been debating running a part-time option or a Skype course in order to adapt to today’s economic climate.

For the first time in nearly 30 years, Cullingham has found himself in an “adapt or die” situation.

Yet he almost certainly has the backing to do more than lessen the offering’s intensiveness, which many believe is the key to the course’s success; he has a venerable sweet shop of the UK’s finest creative talent to tap up, should he want to.

Paddy Fraser, creative director at CP&B

“Tony taught me about single-minded ideas. Start with truth. Be relevant but different. Lateral ideas are only one logical leap. Write like people talk. Practice. Craft. Have fun. Don’t move to Watford.”

Perhaps Cullingham’s problem is he feels more comfortable promoting his alumni than he does himself. His suggested angle for this very article was about the talent he has worked with – not his role in engineering their success – and he doesn’t even keep a headshot on file.

“Tony is one of the most under-appreciated overachievers in the industry,” according to Stuart Harkness, former pupil and 72&Sunny’s executive creative director in Amsterdam. And while the tutor remains modest regarding his obvious talent as an educator, he doesn’t hold back when reeling off the list of students he’s proud of.

So in some way, it’s up to the industry to rally behind and save Watford. But if it doesn’t, Cullingham has an immaculately droll plan B.

“If all else fails I’ll run a clown school,” he says. “Apparently, there’s a worldwide shortage of clowns.”

This content was originally published here.

Swansea City star Renato Sanches passes to advertising board instead of team-mate for hilarious reason

So much was promised of Renato Sanches after the Portugal midfielder won the 2016 Golden Boy award.

The then-teenager helped guide Portgual to a famous Euro 2016 title and secured a big money move from Benfica to Bayern Munich.

But Sanches struggled during his first season in the Bundesliga, making just 25 appearances in all competitions – the majority coming from the bench.

The Portugal starlet was subsequently loaned out – and to a destination that surprised pretty much everyone: Swansea City.

Renato Sanches makes his pass

A pin-point effort, straight at Sanches’s target

Paul Lambert can’t believe it

By loaning the 20-year-old to a lesser team in a higher tier, Bayern were hoping Sanches would rediscover his best form.

Alas, the midfield maestro has continued to struggle. Sanches was even hooked at half-time during Swansea’s 0-0 draw with Bournemouth on Saturday.

And things appeared to hit rock bottom for the lad during the Swans’ 1-0 defeat to Chelsea on Wednesday night.

Renato Sanches is struggling at Swansea

Thinking he had spotted a team-mate out of the corner of his eye, Sanches passed the ball directly to his target.

The only problem was, the target in question turned out to be a red Carabao logo – the same colour as Swansea’s shirts – located on the sponsorship hoarding.

Footage of the moment has circulated on Twitter and received plenty of attention…

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Starbucks got more than $2billion in free advertising from a coffee cup appearing in Game of Thrones | Daily Mail Online

A coffee cup that appeared in the latest episode of Game of Thrones has generated an estimated $2.3billion worth of free advertising for Starbucks, and it wasn’t even the company’s beverage.

The cup that showed up in the first airing of season eight’s episode four of GoT was actually a plain cup from the on-site food service referred to as craft services, CNBC reported. However, fans assuming it was a Starbucks drink lit up social media. 

Chief executive officer of marketing company Hollywood Branded Stacy Jones said that the approximate value of all the discussion amounted to $2.3billion in commercial value.

Critical mention, a PR subscriptions service, counted 10,627 mentions of Starbucks and ‘Game of Thrones’ across the internet and in television and radio broadcasts.

A coffee cup showing up in the latest episode of Game of Thrones has generated an estimated $2.3billion worth of free advertising for Starbucks, and it wasn’t even the company’s beverage. Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, is pictured in the scene with the coffee cup in front of her on a table

In the latest In the episode titled ‘The Last of the Starks,’ a coffee cup is clearly visible on a table in front of Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, just before the 17:40 mark. it was actually a plain cup from the on-site food service referred to as craft services, but fans assuming it was a Starbucks drink lit up social media

In the episode titled, ‘The Last of the Starks,’ a coffee cup is clearly visible on a table in front of Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, just before the 17:40 mark. 

The conspicuously out-of-place cup, which can be seen for about two seconds, was spotted by ‘GoT’ fans shortly after the episode aired. 

As of Monday morning, it was on Twitter’s top 10 trending topics. Also trending on Twitter was the hashtag ‘Starkbucks,’ a nod to the unexpected blending of House Stark and the Seattle-based coffee chain.

Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee chain, had its own take on the unexpected publicity in a series that is watched by more than 30 million people in the United States alone.

‘TBH we’re surprised she didn’t order a Dragon Drink,’ the company said on Twitter, referring to its summer menu addition of a bright pink fruit and coconut milk beverage that contains the tropical dragon fruit, also known as pitaya.

‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime collision of opportunity for Starbucks,’ Jones said.

‘But really, this is just the tip of the iceberg, because what isn’t being monitored or estimated is the word of mouth and social media on top of this.’

Social media mentions for Starbucks and ‘Game of Thrones,’ or some variation of a reference to the series, monitored by analytics company Talkwalker numbered in six-digit figures.

Within 48 hours of the show’s airing the topic had been mentioned 193,000 times on Twitter, in online forums, blogs and on news websites. 

Game Of Thrones fans joked Sansa Stark (played by Sophie Turner, at right) was the ‘coffee cup culprit’ as viewers shared an image of Turner holding a matching beverage on Wednesday, standing alongside Bella Ramsey, who played Lyanna Mormont

Fans joked on Wednesday that it was Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, who was responsible for the errant coffee cup making an appearance in the show.

Bella Ramsey, who played Lyanna Mormont, shared an image of herself standing beside Turner, who appeared to be holding a cup that matched the one spotted in front of Clarke in Sunday’s episode.

Dan Hill, CEO of Hill Impact, told CNBC that the actual value of the mishap is immeasurable. 

‘It’s impossible to put a real figure on how much free advertising Starbucks gets out of the situation, but it’s in a totally different category than product placement because it was accidental, which makes it more valuable,’ Hills said.

‘I know people assign a value to these things, “more than $1 million in public relations,” but I think it’s all hogwash — too hard to quantify. Plus this one will live on as a meme, so I guess you could say it’s a gift that will keep on giving.’

The eighth and final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ has broken records for HBO, with more than 38 million American watching the season premiere episode that was broadcast on April 14.

The Emmy-winning series, an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series of novels, comes to a conclusion on May 19.

In Sunday’s episode, the coffee cup was apparently later edited out for streaming versions, but as Hill said, even as the series draws to a close, the memes will live on the internet forever.

Chief executive officer of marketing company Hollywood Branded Stacy Jones said the approximate value of all the discussion amounted to $2.3 billion in commercial value. In Sunday’s episode, the coffee cup was apparently later edited out for streaming versions, but even as the series draws to a close, the memes will live on the internet forever.  The characters of Wildling Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju), Jon Snow (Kitt Harrington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) are shown in the scene with the coffee cup

Starbucks got more than $2billion in free advertising from a coffee cup appearing in Game of Thrones

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Sexism in advertising: ‘They talk about diversity, but they don’t want to change’ | Media | The Guardian

I n 2017, Victoria Brooks, the vice-president of Bloom, a network for women in advertising and communications, had an idea. Aware that there were some subjects its members found difficult to discuss even among supportive peers, she decided to set up what would come to be known as the Booth of Truth at the organisation’s inaugural day-long conference in Clerkenwell, London. Inside this enclosed space, women would be able to write down their experiences of such things as discrimination and sexual harassment, safe in the knowledge that they would be anonymous. These anecdotes would then be used at the end of the day as fodder for a panel discussion and advice session that she and the president of Bloom, Stephanie Matthews, would call Confessions Live.
The first booth (there have since been others) was inflatable, and resembled an igloo. It contained a sofa, a selection of coloured pens, and a box into which the confession cards could be posted. But if this sounds light-hearted the result was precisely the opposite. “It was an outpouring,” says Brooks, whose day job is as an independent strategy consultant to the advertising industry.
On the table in the office where we’re meeting, she and Matthews, a campaign manager at Virgin, carefully lay out a selection of the cards. What they reveal is shocking. Some of these haikus of misery, inscribed in red, purple and green, are so horrible, I seem only to be able to absorb them by reading them very slowly, out loud.
Someone once wrote a card saying that any woman who speaks out will never work again
“I arrived in London for my new job and the CEO said: when are we going to fuck? When I rebuffed him, he said: why did you think I recruited you? For your excellent strategy?”
“My old CEO asked another member of staff if he had ‘been through me’.”
“Feeling sick and pretending to laugh it off when your head of trading tells you that you look ‘OK’ today, and that he ‘definitely would’ in front of the whole team.”
“When your CEO tells you that he only hires ‘pretty, blond girls’ and then regularly invites female employees back to his hotel for champagne.”
“I was once told to ‘slap my dick on the table’. It was my male CEO trying to tell me I needed to be less female when it came to stakeholder management.”
A few moments tick by, and then Brooks says: “It feels like Mad Men , doesn’t it? You think this stuff is done. But it’s not done at all.” Isn’t it possible for women formally to complain about such behaviour? Or is the mere existence of the Booth of Truth the answer to such questions? She nods. “Someone once wrote a card saying that any woman who speaks out will never work again.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elisabeth Moss (centre) as Peggy Olson, working to be taken seriously as a creative in Mad Men, season 2. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature
The #MeToo movement, which began its life as a hashtag in October 2017, following allegations of sexual abuse against the Hollywood mogul, Harvey Weinstein, has, Brooks believes, had a mixed effect on the world of advertising. People are certainly more aware and increasingly mobilised. The ad industry’s own campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace, #timeTo , a joint initiative between the Advertising Association, NABs (the National Advertising Benevolent Society, a charity that aims to improve the wellbeing of those who work in advertising) and WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications), was launched in March 2018, and has since produced a code of conduct that has been endorsed by 180 companies. In the US, Diet Madison Avenue, an anonymous Instagram account dedicated to exposing sexual harassment in advertising, has allegedly led to several men losing their jobs since it began last year (it has since been closed down).
But this doesn’t mean that most sexual harassment has gone away – or that its victims are finding it any easier to report. The movement has, moreover, had unforeseen consequences for women. Like several others I speak to while researching this piece, Brooks believes there is truth in a recent study by Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In foundation, which found that since the advent of #MeToo men have pulled back from, say, one-to-one mentoring relationships with women. (Is this due to genuine anxiety, or is it simply a convenient excuse? The Lean In foundation, and the more generous-minded, insist it’s the former. Either way, the result is a double unfairness for women.)
“The tendency is for people to go into their camps,” says Brooks. “The sisterhood, and the brotherhood. What we need to do now is engage feminist men.” Bloom is actively seeking senior male mentors with whom its members might work. Meanwhile, she and Matthews also plan in the near future to hold an event featuring a Booth of Truth in which men will have the chance to offer up their own experiences.
Even those who know almost nothing about advertising – leaving aside our collective memories of the Smash robot, the Milky Bar Kid and the Honey Monster – have a sense of how it used to be. Some of us were avid for Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men , the 60s-set TV series that according to one (male) CEO captures the early days of advertising so perfectly “it might as well have been fact”. Others may remember the widely reported antics at the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi in the late 70s and early 80s (the agency started by Maurice and Charles Saatchi created, among other things, the line “Labour Isn’t Working” for the Conservative party in 1979). As Richard Myers, Simon Goode and Nick Darke note at the beginning of their 2017 book Chutzpah & Chutzpah , Saatchi was once so famous that when invited to participate in a competition in which agencies could promote themselves on a huge screen in Piccadilly Circus, it came up with the line: “Name the first advertising agency that comes into your head.” This was followed a few seconds later with the word: “Exactly.” Advertising was not only flashy, awash with cash and champagne (and possibly other substances); above all, it was charged with testosterone. It was a boys’ club, and this showed in the campaigns it produced for everything from Wonderbra to Yorkie bars.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gustavo Martinez. Photograph: D Dipasupil/Getty Images
A lot has changed. Nevertheless, the past three years have not been good for the industry’s reputation when it comes to gender and diversity. In August 2016, Kevin Roberts, the executive chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, stood down after saying in an interview that the debate about gender bias was “over” and implying that women lacked the right kind of ambition for leadership. In October 2017, Justin Tindall, the chief creative officer of M&C Saatchi caused an outcry when he wrote, in a column for a trade magazine, that he was “bored of diversity being prioritised over talent” (Tindall later apologised for his remarks; he is still in his job, and the agency has since installed a head of culture and inclusion, Sereena Abbassi). In March 2018, The&Partnership apologised to its staff and any others who were offended by an email sent by a departing junior employee, Paul Martin, in which he ranked his female colleagues according to attractiveness (one comment read: “If you were the last girl on earth, I would use you as bait to trap a wild animal I would be happier fucking”). In June 2018, Gustavo Martinez, the former CEO of JWT, left WPP two years after the company settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against him (WPP is JWT’s holding company). This came just two months after Martin Sorrell, WPP’s founder, resigned after 33 years following allegations, strenuously denied by him, of personal misconduct and misuse of company assets (the claims made against him involved visits to sex workers and a culture of bullying).
The statistics, moreover, speak for themselves. Now that companies employing more than 250 people are obliged by law to release their gender pay figures, all the world can see that in advertising something is badly amiss. The numbers make sorry reading. In 2018, the worst gender pay gap in the industry was 44.7% at JWT. JWT has a reputation for being very male, but at AMV BBDO, whose CEO was then a woman, Cilla Snowball, it was 37.5%; at adam&eveDDB, an agency also run by a woman, Tammy Einav, the gap was 34.2%. Across the industry, 29% of staff are women, but they tend to rise only so far; they are more rarely in leadership roles, on the board, or partners – and it is this, in part, that skews the figures. More notably, they account for only 12% of creative directors, often among the most highly paid roles in an agency.
Those white guys are sitting pretty. Enormous salaries, bonuses, stock options, expenses… Why would they rock the boat?” Cindy Gallop
“When we do presentations, our killer slide is a photograph of all the creative directors: basically, a load of white men,” says Ali Hanan, a former creative at Ogilvy who is now the chief executive of Creative Equals , an organisation that champions diversity in the creative industries. “Then we show a slide of the people they’re making ads for: 85% of purchasing decisions are made by women. It’s shocking. The Advertising Standards Authority wouldn’t have had to introduce guidelines on gender stereotyping if more women had been working on the ads in the first place.”
It is, she says, a vicious circle. “Women are often not invited to the pitch table [when the agency is working on a pitch for a new client]. Their work is 10% less likely to be put forward for awards, and when it is, historically, the men have always been running the juries. Thanks to all this, 12% of creative women are thinking of leaving in the next couple of years.”
Women may be held back by a lack of mentors (only 25% of women have a female line manager) and by long-hours culture (during a pitch, people are often in the office until the small hours). But there is also the question of what happens to new mothers. According to Hanan: “There’s a phrase in our industry: you’re only as good as your last piece of work. That’s particularly unforgiving for those coming back after maternity leave.”
Two women told me about their experiences in this regard. “I was often the only female in the room,” says one former creative. “When I came back from having my son, my work had been handed to a 23-year-old man. I got a lawyer, pursued a discrimination case, and won a pay-off that was big enough for a down payment on a flat. But I also had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. They bought my silence.”
The use of NDAs is widespread. “There is absolute paranoia about image and damage limitation,” says one CEO. But while the signing of an NDA may secure a larger financial payment for women who have been discriminated against, it comes with a heavy price. “I’ve met women who have signed NDAs,” says Nicola Kemp, an editor at the trade magazine Campaign . “They’re a form of gaslighting. The women turn in on themselves, blaming themselves for experiences that are not their fault. That companies address this culture in the future is vital. In my opinion, it’s a form of corporate negligence.”
Finally, there is the issue of sexual harassment, another means by which a woman’s career may be derailed. Opinions vary as to how widespread it is in the industry. A survey of 3,500 advertising employees carried out by the #timeTo initiative found that 34% of women questionedhad been harassed, the majority of them more than once. A quarter of the sample had been harassed six times or more. Among females aged 18 to 24 – in other words, women at the beginning of their careers – 20% had been harassed, most by more senior colleagues. Of those who reported their harassment, half were dissatisfied with the outcome; 83% had not reported it on the grounds that they didn’t trust the reporting system and were afraid of damaging their careers.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kerry Glazer.
“Our industry is a very social one,” says Kerry Glazer, the CEO of AAR, a former president of WACL, and one of those involved in #timeTo. “Our survey told us that harassment was most common where socialising, travel and alcohol were involved.”
Is she optimistic these figures will have improved when, later this year, the companies that have endorsed #timeTo will be surveyed?
“Yes, I do feel optimistic,” she says. “The code sets out clearly what to do if you have experienced or witnessed harassment, or if you have overstepped the mark yourself. It is clear that if a company doesn’t act properly having signed up to the code after someone comes forward with a complaint, it will be very much the worse for it.”
But others think these figures are just the tip of the iceberg – even if this is something they will only talk about off the record. NDAs are also being used in sexual harassment cases, and while the victim of such abuse then leaves the company, the perpetrator, if they are sufficiently senior, is often simply shifted into another role (this is what happened to Gustavo Martinez). Such men are sometimes moved abroad, to work in the holding company’s interests in, say, Hong Kong or Singapore.
Again and again, as I researched this piece, the same name came up: a senior executive whose behaviour was, by one account, associated with no fewer than eight NDAs. He was one of those who had been sent elsewhere, thus keeping his status and high salary. What is particularly enraging is that in at least one of these cases, the NDA must have been signed off by, among others, a woman executive.
Cindy Gallop is an industry legend. The founder of the US wing of BBH and the former chair of its board, she left advertising in 2005 to set up her own consultancy; in 2009 she launched MakeLoveNotPorn, a website that hosts amateur porn videos. She is known for her TED talks. She believes that sexual harassment is “systemic” in advertising, and that it is the single biggest brake on female success: “It manages women out, destroys ambitions, derails careers, crushes dreams.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cindy Gallop: ‘I am horrified by the names. These are men I considered friends, who I thought were the good guys. Now I know what they’re really fucking doing.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian
In October, 2017, after the New York Times broke the Weinstein story , Gallop thought that the moment might have come for people in her world to speak out. “I put a post on Facebook, asking people to name names, agencies, holding companies, brands, everything – and I was inundated. I got an absolute avalanche of emails.” At the time, Gallop committed publicly to breaking these stories in the media, but she has since had to admit to failing “spectacularly” on this score: “No one will go on the record. The powerful men run everything, and they [the victims] are scared shitless.”
Has this surprised her? “I am horrified by the names. These are men I considered friends, who I thought were the good guys; who looked me in the eye and told me how highly they thought of women. Now I know what they’re really fucking doing.” Like Nicola Kemp, she thinks women are “crumpled” by NDAs. “We need to reposition what it means to be a whistleblower in our industry. They’re the true heroes. People should be falling over themselves to hire them.”
Gallop, an Oxford University graduate, began her career in advertising in the mid-80s, after working as a theatre publicist. Though she did not recognise the environment then to be particularly sexist – “a fish does not know what water is; that’s the way it was” – does it surprise her that things haven’t evolved more in the years since? “You’re going to have to forgive me for sounding utterly exasperated,” she says. “Yes, I’m fed up with nothing changing. But the reason that nothing is changing is because at the top is a coterie of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys. Those white guys are sitting very pretty. They have enormous salaries, gigantic bonuses, huge stock options, lavish expense accounts. Why on earth would they ever want to rock the boat?”
What about all their initiatives, though? The heads of inclusion? The fact that they have endorsed organisations such as Creative Equals and #timeTo? She sighs. “They have to talk diversity. They have to say the word ‘diversity’ a lot. Secretly, they don’t want to change a thing. The system is working fine for them.” What about the senior women now rapidly rising up through the ranks? Does she think they will be able to make a difference? “Those senior women are signing off the NDAs and the pay-offs for the serial harassers and the rapists – and I use that word very deliberately, and in the plural. Internalised misogyny and the patriarchal system mean they’re doing exactly what the men want them to do, which is to hush it up and make it go away at all costs.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mothercare’s much-criticised 2015 ad for children’s toys that dressed girls up as 50s housewives.
Jo Arden is someone who knows all about the patriarchy. The chief strategy officer at MullenLowe (and the most senior woman at the agency), she read women’s studies at Bradford University. “I was on a course with some very separatist feminists,” she says, with a smile. Arden, who is 43, is one of a new generation of women in advertising: clever, ambitious, and extremely good at her job, but also plain-sighted and plain-speaking when it comes to the problems in her industry. Like the majority of the women I speak to for this piece, she is state-educated (she attended a comprehensive in Oldham) and knew nothing about advertising, or how to get into it, growing up. After university, she worked in recruitment: her specialism was the maintenance trade, so she spent her time hiring plumbers and bricklayers; it was very male and “quite brutal”. With the same company, she then moved to London, where she set up a division putting placements into ad agencies. It was at this point that she got interested in advertising, and her next job was in business development at an agency.
Arden believes things have changed a lot since then: a time when women were, as she puts it, slightly sarcastically, “invited to get involved by the men, without the men realising what barriers stood in their way”. Why have things changed? “My view is that scrutiny is the main reason,” she says. “We move fast when there’s a business imperative. If we had seen a business imperative in broader representation sooner, we would have changed a fuck of a lot sooner.”
The bottom line is that clients want their agencies to be more diverse, because such teams will make better, more relevant work: campaigns that more fully reflect the world and the people in it. They want “authenticity” – and they, after all, pay the bills. Diageo, which makes Bailey’s and Guinness, is one of the companies that has led the way on this (its chief marketing officer, Syl Saller, is a woman). The agencies, then, have (albeit more slowly) come to agree. The most forward-thinking are increasingly keen to hire more women and people from BAME backgrounds – and then to hang on to these recruits by allowing them to be what Arden calls “their whole selves”.
There are still events where people think I’m the cloakroom assistant Karen Blackett
MullenLowe recently invited Creative Equals to carry out an agency-wide survey that would provide hard data on how it is doing in terms of diversity: “They make you stare down the reality of your situation, and it was pretty difficult hearing the story of a workforce that feel less empowered to achieve their potential than we would like. But it has also enabled us to focus on what we’re worst at.”
The agency, with help from an organisation called Hidden, which handles its recruitment, has begun using so-called “blind” CVs, on which all details that might reveal a person’s background in terms of gender, race, social class and education are removed. What about pay? “We have pay parity at MullenLowe, and a thorough promotion and pay-rise scheme that is moderated across the business. We have a gender pay gap because of our senior executives.”
The agencies I visit, with their iPad check-ins, their groovy furniture and their “werk perks” (boxing, yoga, massages), seem very white. But that isn’t the whole story. Currently, advertising’s most successful (and visible) woman is Karen Blackett , the chair of MediaCom UK, and the daughter of first generation immigrants from Barbados (her father was a bus conductor; her mother was a nurse). As a child, Blackett “loved the ads on television as much as the programmes… I would try and come up with better jingles.” She had no idea that advertising was a career; it was only after her geography degree at Portsmouth University that she began subscribing to MediaWeek and Campaign , in a bid to land herself a job. This, she soon did, “and it was incredibly strange; I was one of only two black people in the agency”. How did that make her feel? “There were moments when I lacked confidence, but I could see I could make a difference.”
Blackett, now 47, rose determinedly through the ranks. How did she do it? “I think finding organisations where difference is celebrated is so important, and I was fortunate: I managed that. I did make mistakes. I joined companies where everyone was the same, and meant to respond in the same way. But I learned to leave if I wasn’t comfortable, and I had the benefit of amazing mentors: people who could talk about my talent when I wasn’t known to senior management.”
Was she ever on the receiving end of sexism or racism? “Yes, absolutely. I remember earlier in my career, you’d talk to someone on the phone, and then you’d turn up for a face-to-face meeting and they’d be visibly shocked. There are still events where people think I’m the cloakroom assistant.”
How can someone like her effect change? The answer is: fairly easily. “It’s no coincidence that when I became CEO, I put in place programmes to change our diversity: 40% of our entrants are now from a BAME background. We also created an apprentice scheme, and we now run insight days where our apprentices go out, in turn, into communities. We’ve got rid of CVs as well. We’re more interested in behaviour. In interviews, we’ll ask people, say, to tell us about a time when they were brave.”
There is, though, still some way to go. “Only 36% of senior leadership across the industry is female. We do need to do more. But we can’t do it without the smart men. If they’re in the majority, they’re the ones who can effect change. Let’s bring them with us.”
I wonder if Blackett has ever been sexually harassed. “Probably, yes. There were comments, the odd person who got a bit too friendly. But I’ve had enough conversations in the past year with women to know that it still happens; I’ve seen enough verbatims. There are – I try to be compassionate – people in our industry who do not realise this is not OK, and we need to help them. But there are also some people who know full well what they are doing, and they need to jog on, frankly.”
Mothercare’s positive 2019 campaign celebrating women’s real, post-birth bodies.
One of those Blackett has occasionally quietly mentored is Sarah Jenkins, the chief marketing officer at Grey, whose clients include Volvo and M&S. Jenkins grew up in Weymouth, the black child of adoptive white parents, and went into advertising because “in the late 80s and early 90s, the time of the Levi ads and the Wrigley ads, they were better than the TV programmes”. She has never been sexually harassed, but she knows of women who have been. Like Blackett and Arden, she is clear-sighted both about how far Grey has come, and how far it still has to go. The pay gap at Grey remains high (in 2018, the figure was 24.6%, but this has risen in 2019 to 31%), that “clearly isn’t right”, and in order to help begin correcting it, two-thirds of its women employees have now been through a coaching programme: “They need to be powered up,” she says. But getting results in terms of diversity isn’t, she admits, always straightforward. For instance, while the number of new entrants from BAME backgrounds is on the rise, many of these same people are privately educated.
Jenkins loves her job (“I like it that my mum can say: I saw your new ad”) but her experiences as a black woman in the industry have been, as she puts it, “contradictory… There’s an assumption, still, that I’m not as senior as I am. Sometimes, when I come down to reception, people assume I’m an assistant.”
Does that make her cross? “I think they’re an idiot, so it’s more pity that I feel, really. But I also think: you’re about to learn how incredible a black woman can be. I’ll be on my A-game. I can’t see a point when it has hindered my career. In a way, it has propelled me. I can’t [allow myself to] fail. I stand out, I’m different, I’m memorable, I perform.”
What about the ads themselves? In 2017, Mothercare was widely criticised for the 1950s-style marketing of its clothes (one ad featured a little girl dressed as a housewife, pushing a vacuum cleaner). Cut to 2019, however, and it is running a campaign that “celebrates” post-birth bodies. Things are changing rapidly, and yet, the fact remains: only 12% of creative directors are female. Thinking about this led me eventually to Jo Wallace, creative director of JWT, who last year found herself at the centre of a very public row when she said at a conference that she wanted to “obliterate” its reputation as an agency that is full of white, straight, privileged men (soon after, several men who had been made redundant at JWT, launched a discrimination case against the agency).
Wallace cannot talk about this case, which is ongoing. But she is happy to discuss her work – and JWT’s pay gap, which at the same conference she and a colleague reportedly said had put “a rocket up the arse of all of the agency’s diversity plans” (in 2019, the figure at JWT has improved by about six percentage points to 38.3%) . She believes that fixing pay differentials may be easier than people make out. “If you need to fill a role, there should be a bracket of pay that is relevant to that role. One recruiter I know has now stopped asking questions, like: ‘What are you on now?’ Instead, they will ask the agency: ‘What are you willing to pay?’ It’s a simple idea, but it works.” In the past, some recruiters have “almost assumed” that women would end up being paid less, largely because they often ask for less.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An image from the If England Gets Beaten So Will She campaign during the World Cup.
Wallace, who grew up in Essex where she attended a “super compy-comp”, did the advertising course at what is now Buckinghamshire New University, and landed a job as a copywriter at Howell Henry Partners, then home of Tango and First Direct, straight afterwards. Did she find it very male? “Well, it’s not as though I walk around thinking I’m a woman and they’re men. I saw it more as… I know I can do this. Interestingly, I wrote ads that people assumed were written by men. As a writer, you have to be able to change your tone of voice – and you know, guys can write tampon ads. Some of the best tampon ads lately have been by guys.” Nevertheless, she thinks clients are right to believe that a mixed team will ultimately produce better work.
Wallace, like all the women I speak to for this piece, spends a lot of her time working on side projects: among other things, she runs a networking evening club called Good Girls Eat Dinner . But she also believes that advertising itself can effect change, and when I ask her which work she is most proud of she mentions not only the recent Aero campaign , in which bubbles are made using big band music (hard to describe unless you have seen it), but also a reactive campaign made for the National Centre for Domestic Violence during the World Cup last year. “ If England Gets Beaten, So Will She ” read the posters, which showed a woman’s face emblazoned with a St George’s Flag, its red cross drawn in blood.
It was, she says, a project they simply had to do. A team brought the idea to her, she saw in an instant its potential (it hit the news in 13 countries around the world), and the agency produced it in eight days. “We are keen to do work that makes a difference,” she says, a statement that might sound like spin if she didn’t look both so determined, and so sincere.

This content was originally published here.

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Public to be urged to ‘get ready’ for no-deal Brexit chaos in £100m advertising blitz

The government will urge the public to “Get ready” for a no-deal Brexit through a £100m advertising push to begin next week.

Amid dire warnings over shortages of fuel, food and medicines under no deal, Michael Gove is expected to launch a publicity blitz to get businesses and the public ready for the looming prospect of a disorderly departure from the EU.

The campaign will begin as Westminster prepares for a string of extraordinary Commons clashes, as rebel MPs seek to block a no deal Brexit before Boris Johnson suspends parliament for more than a month.

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It will kick off with billboards and an improved government website, with TV and radio advertising to follow in the build up to the 31 October Brexit deadline.

Ministers have even ordered mugs and t-shirts with the ‘Get ready’ slogan, as proposals to use the infamous Vote Leave slogan, ‘Take back control’, were rejected for being too partisan, according to The Times.

Mr Gove, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will address MPs on Tuesday for the first regular update on the state of no-deal preparations.

The prime minister declared his plans for a publicity campaign during the Tory leadership contest, saying: “What we will do, is we will encourage people in a very positive way. From the get-go, we start saying, ‘Look, what do you need, what help do you need, what reassurances do you need?’

“And we make sure that everybody understands all the risks and eventualities, and it’s by doing that . . . in a really wholehearted and systematic and confident way, that you, of course, minimise any disruption that might take place in the unlikely eventuality of you having to come out on WTO terms.”

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It comes as Mr Johnson pledged to “up the tempo” on talks with Brussels as he warned rebel MPs they would not be forgiven by the public if they thwart Brexit.

He told Sky News: “I’m afraid that the more our friends and partners think at the back of their minds that Brexit could be stopped, that the UK could be kept in by parliament, the less likely they are to give us the deal that we need.

“That’s why I really hope that MPs will allow the UK to do a deal and get ready for a no deal Brexit.

“Everyone can see what the risk is now if we frustrate that mandate. If we stop the UK from leaving on October 31, if that’s what parliamentarians end up doing, it will do lasting damage to people’s trust in politics.”

Thousands of people are expected to take to the streets over the weekend to protest the prime minister’s decision to suspend the sitting of the Commons for more than a month.

This content was originally published here.

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New Zealand’s first cannabis advertising campaign draws complaints | Stuff.co.nz

A billboard campaign promoting cannabis as a medicine has sparked a fierce debate including complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Helius Therapeutics, a licenced medicinal cannabis company, has launched the billboards following last week’s legalisation of medicinal cannabis manufacture, to “rebrand” cannabis.

But Hilary Souter of the ASA said three people had laid formal complaints so far. 

“In broad terms, people are expressing concern whether or not it’s legal to promote medicinal cannabis – that’s obviously not an issue the ASA can deal with – and the other matter that people are raising is about children. The fact that it’s a billboard medium means it’s got an unrestricted audience.”

One Stuff commenter, “Dr Rubber,” said he had complained to the ASA even though he was a marijuana user, because he was worried children would get a false impression about cannabis.

“Derivatives and parts of it can be used medicinally, but there’s other things that go on with smoking cannabis that aren’t ideal, like psychosis or anxiety, depression in certain users.”

Helius Therapeutics’ billboard in Auckland’s Anzac Ave advertising cannabis as a medicine, following law changes which allow it.

“To me, I liken that to saying opium is medicine. Just because we use a part of it for medicinal purposes…”

The commenter said he had dropped out of school a year after being introduced to cannabis at the age of 14 and blamed it for setting him on a bad path. He didn’t want that for his kids, he said.

But a blogger whose son needs cannabis to control his life-threatening seizures says she pleased to be part of Helius’ public awareness campaign.

Katy Thomas, whose son has a rare form of epilepsy, shooting an ad for Helius Therapuetics’ cannabis awareness campaign.

​Katy Thomas’s four-year-old son Edward has a rare form of epilepsy which is resistant to anti-epilepsy drugs. Thomas found during a seizure that cannabis had an immediate effect on Edward and spent a year going from doctor to doctor, trying to get a prescription for him.

She said the family had just marked a year without a night at hospital.

At the moment, she said she had to import the right type of cannabis for Edward before it wasn’t present in New Zealand, at great cost. But she hoped a local market and Government funding might bring down prices for others.

“The biggest issue any medicinal marijuana patient is not only access in the literal sense, getting someone to prescribe it to you … there’s also an access issue around funding, because it’s not currently funded, so the price is incredibly prohibitive.

“The idea that there might be a local producer not only increases the number of products that are available to patients, because right now it’s very restrictive.

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“It will reduce the final cost to the consumer because you’re not paying shipping cost, you’re not paying for transport fees, all that malarky by having it produced close to home.

“I really feel that there is definitely a growing section of society that wants to take charge of their own health.”

​Paul Manning, Helius’ executive director, said the campaign was designed to heighten awareness and remove the stigma of using cannabis for medicinal reasons.

“The truth is, it will be everyday people who use medicinal cannabis, which will soon become a very mainstream product.”

Helius has no products to sell yet because the regulations are still being drawn up, so Manning said the company’s current focus was on research and education.

With regard to the ASA complaints, Manning said it was a “stretch” to suggest that a billboard was going to encourage children to start smoking.

“We’re a Kiwi start-up researching and developing health products  – products that Parliament now supports, as do the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders. 

“This is about encouraging education and creating safe, regulated medicinal products which will soon be available for hundreds of thousands of sick Kiwis who desperately need them.”

Paul Manning says the public still needs to guide regulations for medicinal cannabis which will be drawn up next year.

As well as permitting a medicinal cannabis industry, Parliament last year gave doctors the ability to prescribe cannaboidial (CBD) products to patients without needing approval from the health minister.

However, the ministry still has to consult on the regulations, licensing rules and quality standards which medicinal cannabis manufacturers would have to meet. Helius expects to have products available to patients by 2020.

Other Kiwis in Helius’ campaign include medicinal cannabis advocate Pearl Schomberg and Emmelene Pryce whose child suffers from epilepsy.

Neville Findlay, founder of clothing company Zambesi, is also involved, as is Helene Ravlich (a mother, writer and breast cancer survivor), Grace Boyle (a marketer and medical cannabis advocate), Myken Stewart (New Zealand Fashion Week founder and endometriosis sufferer), and Danny Battershill (cannabis patient suffering from severe auto-immune eczema).

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