Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
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
The Great Resignation is over — unless you’re a retail CEO
More than 1,500 chief executives have left their posts so far this year through August, up 4% from last year.
Pitch Deck: How Amazon plans to turn Q3’s $17 billion ad haul into Q4’s next big DSP push
It’s no secret the company wants advertisers to see its demand-side platform as the backbone for buying across the open web.
WPP’s Open Pro AI suite already faces competition from Google and Canva
The holdco hopes its new product can open up SaaS revenue. But tech companies are on its tail.