WPP Shame
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- scribbler
I just heard that WPP have been involved in the advertising campaign for Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Part of me is shocked but part of me isn't surprised in the least. All these huge multi-national companies are shouting about the whole CSR environmental thing and actually they don't give a shit. I work for a WPP company and frankly I'm disgusted.
- Spookytim0
Business is amoral. This doesn't surprise me at all. WPP will probably own a Zimbabwean advertising agency who pitched against other Zimbabwean agencies for the campaign. The same as in every other country.
If it was a UK based creative agency from the WPP network then I would be outraged.
- 0000000
this is life dude,
do you go around checking the company that did the bush's campaign?
- scribbler0
However much people hate what Bush stands for he didn't go around killing his own people for not voting for him.
It's the WPP AGM today. I hope they get roasted.
- detritus0
I'm pretty much disgusted by The Whole Zimbabwe thing (notice, lightly touched summation by comfortable middle glass Westerner), it's been going on longer than this so-called war on terror, in a territory (like Iraq) that was once part of the British Empire, recently the Commonwealth, and what have we done? Nothing. Absolutely nothing for 10 years now.
I am doubly disgusted because I have personally bemoaned this for about 7 years, and what have I done? Nothing, absolutely nothing. I keep on wanting to write letters to my local elected representative, but I haven't. I, and Britain, and the West, are disgustingly hypocritical.
And now it's legitimising the fall of south Africa too. Well done us. Very well fucking done.
- Wolfboy0
I used to work for Hill and Knowlton and they used to work for several very dodgy clients (including doing some PR stuff for Mugabe) and the May Day protest would make sure the course of the march came right past the offices. I'm glad to be out of there I ca tell you, and I only here fairly shitty things about other WPP companies from people who work at them.
- Wolfboy0
When I was at Hill & Knowlton we were visited by Martin Sorell who is the big cheese in WPP and it was like a royal visit. We had a big all staff gathering where he was going to talk to us about how we were all valued employees (I was made redundant a month later) and do a Q&A - it was all horribly staged like the kind of election event 'New Labour' ran when bringing Tony Blair to power. All the questions were planted in the audience before hand and none of them asked anything mildly interesting.
All bar one question that is. There was a girl there who was about to leave the company and she piped up and asked if the company and WPP as a whole would be changing it's policy of working with dictatorships (she mentioned Zimbabwe) and ethically suspect companies (she mentioned Nestle).
It was brilliant, there were several face turning red from the Hill & Knowlton board members and Sorrell himself went into some kind of Borris Johnston style bumbling speech about changing the world from the inside of these companies and regimes. Claiming that with their work they were bringing about change for the good in places like Zimbabwe. Unbelievable bullshit and the whole thing was immediately wrapped up and we were sent back to our desks