There has been a lot of chat and ink being spent on how many major advertisers have pulled out of advertising on the new MTV show Skins. Advertisers like GM, Subway and H&R Block have removed their ads after catching flak from the Parents Television Council (PTC) and other groups. The PTC is now going after the other advertisers who have as of yet not pulled their support. Whether they remove their ads or not, the fact that this situation is occuring reveals a serious flaw in how media is treated by agencies on behalf of their clients.
Let's look at Skins. The UK version of Skins, showing on younger network E4 is a big hit, in fact it won a BAFTA award and has been renewed for a 6th season as well as a big screen version. So of course it would make sense that a US network would want to pick it up. It also has been somewhat controversial in the UK beacuse of it's rampent use of sex, drug use and profanity but in general it is well accepted and it is showing on E4, not something more 'serious' like the BBC.
When MTV announced that it would produce a version of the show, I was wondering how it would do so while keeping the general feel of the original and yet abiding by the guidelines of american television. But in reality, it made perfect sense, it will get viewers for the very reasons that it is controversial. Now here is where my issue comes to light.
Why would advertisers, who were not understanding of the content, want to advertise on a show with such taboo subjects, if they were not prepared for the reaction. Anyone with a Netflix account can watch the original shows on demand to see what they are in for. MTV said they were going to be relatively faithful to the content and within the first 10 minutes of UK episode 1 we have seen bare breasts, bare asses, masturbation, rampant use of words like cock, nipple, twat and fuck and the discussion of getting one of the main characters laid in order to finally lose his virginity at 16. There is also constant discussion of drinking and drug use. All being spun by attractive teens seemingly oblivious to how society wishes to see them.
So, any media planner worth their salt should have done a little of this homework and said to their client "Skins, it could be a big hit, but without a doubt it is going to catch some heat, are you up for defending your placement in exchange for the potential upside of attention and affinity that this show may bring", It is called risk tolerance. Is the risk of the backlash worth the upside that you can get from a potentially hot and certainly talked about show, especially within your target demo.
Instead of taking a risk tolerance approach to whether they should have been there in the first place (I mean really, what was H&R block doing there to begin with?), all of these advertisers acted shocked when they get requests from groups like the PTC (whose main mission is to complain about television shows and pressure advertisers to remove their ads, augmenting their future power to do so) and run scared. Either support the content or don't, but at least be educated enough to make the right decision. The UK version seemingly did not rile advertisers because they understood what they were buying.
Which brings us to another hypothesis, that these advertisers could potentially have used the airing and subsequent pulling out of the show specifically to re-enforce their "American" values and showing that they too, like many conservatives will not tolerate this type of content for the youth (despite their initial support). This stance allows them a PR angle that is bound to get them more attention for their position (and product) than their ads would have gotten being part of a 2 minute block in the second half of the show. Not the most honest way to plan media IMO.
Either way, it shows me that more thought needs to be put into the media planning discipline and that really understanding both the medium and the content you wish to align with is paramount to media success. Something that it would seem the planners placing GM (on some key other brands) into Skins seemed to forget.
