Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
It’s time for banks to clean up their houses.
At least, that’s the message Bank of America svp Lou Paskalis sent last month when he announced the bank will hire a brand safety officer to ensure the company’s ads aren’t served up next to controversial content.
“I get a text from my chief financial officer every time there is news about a brand safety issue. I know why he is sending them to me… at some point he is going to say ‘gee is marketing safe to invest in?’ and we don’t want that,” he said.“We have to clean up our house right now.”
Paskalis is part of a growing, yet somewhat puzzling trend: Top marketers at giant financial institutions are becoming the new most vocal people demanding change in marketing, evangelizing a cleanup of digital media, or simply becoming more “woke.”
It’s perhaps a little ironic: These are heads of marketing at companies that are part of an industry still recovering from the reputational crises brought during the financial crisis. Their investment banking counterparts continue to rack up fines for things like anti-money laundering violations and market manipulation — things that have long run rampant in the industry and perhaps always will.
More in Marketing
WTF is Meta’s Manus tool?
Meta added a new agentic AI tool to its Ads Manager in February. Buyers have been cautiously probing its potential use cases.
Agencies grapple with economics of a new marketing currency: the AI token
Token costs pose questions for under-pressure agency pricing models. Are they a line item, a cost center — or an opportunity?
From Boll & Branch to Bogg, brands battle a surge of AI-driven return fraud
Retailers say fraudsters are increasingly using AI tools to generate fake damage photos, receipts and documentation to claim refunds.