GB News doesn't have a numbers problem, it has a status problem
We live in an "informed publics" world and advertisers know it
Supporters of GB News have been celebrating the fact that the advertising boycott of the channel has led to an increase in its audience numbers. The Evening Standard reported:
“Attempts by activist groups to pressure companies to stop advertisements on GB News are making people more likely to watch the channel, a poll has found.
A survey of 1,000 people found that 29 per cent were more likely to watch GB News following the boycott, compared to 14 per cent who said they were less likely to tune in.
Brendan Clarke-Smith, the Conservative MP for Bassetlaw, said the poll revealed that “the vast majority of normal people out there just want businesses to focus on selling them the right products at the right prices”.”
But while this attempt at censorship has produced a Streisand Effect, the poll will make little difference to the views of advertisers.
Since launch, and despite a wobbly start, GB News has attracted larger audiences for many of its shows than rolling new rivals like Sky and the BBC, but momentum behind the boycott has built regardless. This is not a numbers game, however. If it was, then the market-leading Daily Mail would have been able to shrug off Stop Funding Hate’s attacks, but it couldn’t. And GB News will lose too until it attracts a different audience - or plays a different game.
Because the advertising boycott is not a commercial calculation, it is a reputational one. And when it comes to reputation management, there is an unspoken truth.
Your opinions don’t matter. Or rather, yours probably do, because you’re reading a blog about the PR industry. But most people’s don’t.
When it comes to ‘reputation management’ almost all briefs concern themselves with some variation of the “informed publics” audience.
The ‘informed publics’ are typically people who read the news, have a degree-level education and who occupy mid-level or senior roles within an organisation. Whether any of that makes them particularly well-informed on any given issue is uncertain, but it does mean that a business leader might end up having to have a conversation with one at some point.
‘Informed publics’ tend to hold more views and be more ready to express them publicly. They Tweet. They post reviews. They write to MPs. They compose catchy placard slogans. They go to parties and express strong political opinions. They are quick to mobilise or rally around colleagues if they think their employers have done wrong. They often work in organisations or roles that give them a public platform, like a marketing department or an advertising agency. They are high status - and they hold high status opinions.
The ‘informed publics’ are Pareto’s elites - the 20% of the population with the financial, institutional and cultural power to govern the court of public opinion and police the boundaries of acceptable opinions and behaviours.
In this context, what Express readers or Talk Radio listeners think about political issues is of little concern. Many organisations faced with a protest organised by low status individuals would see it as a sign they were doing something right, and double-down accordingly.
GB News’ problem is therefore not Barb’s numbers, but the barbs directed at their viewers. Some advertisers are just embarrassed to be associated with GB News, because of what it says about them, their brand and the true nature of their customer base. And why deal with the hassle of employee criticism or Twitter bombardments, when there are plenty of other ways to reach your customers? The issue is no more elevated than that.
So GB News has three options:
Ride it out. Write off some brands and target advertisers that are less concerned about what the informed public think and those brands that the activists tend to ignore. There is a parallel economy outside the world of metropolitan and global brands, and it ought to be big enough to sustain them. The activists will, in any case, move on to something else, at which point some brands may gradually return.
Challenge brand perceptions. Carry out a charm offensive targeting the media and advertising industry. Surprise critics by revealing that the audience is more high status and varied than they suppose (if indeed it is). Show that GB News is part of the mainstream after all, with some editorial campaigns designed to appeal ‘informed publics’ without alienating their core audience (issues like coastal water quality or tackling modern slavery would unite all sides).
Take the moral high ground. GB News can reject the boycott’s premise, but not on the grounds of protecting free speech, which is its current strategy. This argument has been lost - and curtailing free speech in the name of protecting the vulnerable is now commonplace. Instead, GB News can reject the boycotters on their own terms, calling them out as snobs, abusing their power.
To this end, they have a gift in the form of Led By Donkeys, one of the campaign groups targeting them. This weekend, an old Guardian profile of Led By Donkeys went viral on Twitter recently as people ridiculed them for their ‘ageing hipster central casting’ photoshoot. The fact that the mockery came from their fellow ‘informed publics’ meant that it wounded.
If there’s one thing that damages the high-status influencer, it’s to be called out for being high-status. GB News could go on the offensive, but it would be a high-risk strategy.