NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Business / Companies / Media and marketing

John Drinnan: No dirt, we're advertisers

John Drinnan
By John Drinnan
Columnist·NZ Herald·
28 Aug, 2014 09:30 PM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Photo / Doug Sherring

Photo / Doug Sherring

John Drinnan
Opinion by John Drinnan
John Drinnan is the Media writer for the New Zealand Herald.
Learn more

Cameron Slater delivers whale-size bite to companies who cancel ads to avoid the Dirty Politics controversy.

The Dirty Politics storm has exposed the dangers of advertising on controversial political websites.

The Nicky Hager book attacked the Whale Oil site with allegations of dirty tricks and links to the National Party, the Food & Grocery Council and the tobacco industry - allegations rejected by Cameron Slater, the site's owner.

Slater and his attacking approach have always been controversial. But Dirty Politics has placed him at the centre of the election campaign, and his reaction to advertisers who have withdrawn from the site has been similar to his approach to politicians he dislikes.

In typically forceful fashion, he has implied that advertisers who withdrew from Whale Oil were aligning themselves with the left. He even published a photograph of Labour's Grant Robertson in a photo opportunity at a Pak'nSave as evidence the supermarket leaned to the left.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

That logic will be shocking to any of the myriad advertisers who have hosted photo ops; taken to its logical conclusion, it would presumably see politicians banned from many retail premises.

Flight Centre and Pak'nSave both decided they did not want to be seen on Whale Oil and withdrew their ads as the political storm escalated. Pak'nSave - which is part of the Foodstuffs co-operative - suffered double trouble with Slater bizarrely accusing the supermarket chain of taking a political and/or ethical stance.

"I don't like the idea of where that's going to end up with a list of companies that will support left politics, and list of companies that will support the right," Slater said, with typical hyperbole, in an August 22 post.

"With everything else going on right now, the last thing we need is to go on a witch-hunt and divide the nation's businesses into political and apolitical."

Yet the standard view in media and advertising is not so conspiratorial. Advertisers often avoid being linked to political controversy.

Both advertisers said their withdrawal from Whale Oil was to avoid the danger of being called political.

Discover more

Opinion

John Drinnan: Late entry in pay TV race

31 Jul 09:30 PM
Opinion

Opinion: Image repair for SkyCity

07 Aug 09:30 PM
Opinion

John Drinnan: Hopes high for Dark Horse

14 Aug 09:30 PM
Opinion

John Drinnan: Slater has a friend in Israel

21 Aug 09:30 PM

Foodstuffs group communications director Antoinette Shallue said: "Due to recent publicity Whale Oil has become part of a highly emotional political debate.

"As such we have chosen that in the lead-up to the general election it is most appropriate for our brand not to advertise on this site. Our advertising withdrawal is that ... we refuse to be seen to be taking sides.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"We have nothing further to add on our decision, which will be reviewed after the election."

Flight Centre NZ managing director Chris Grieve said the company was non-political and it didn't position itself in association with political blogs.

"The company investigated this issue with our media agency and has set up an exclusion to ensure that Flight Centre's advertisements do not appear on any political blogs."


AUTOPILOT
All this is a messy issue for advertisers and for media buyers who place advertising with small websites.

They buy space for ads using automated processes, pay no heed to content and brand, and focus on the number of readers. This hands-off approach is needed, largely because there is so much fragmentation of digital media, and the buyers don't have the resources to make one-by-one decisions. In some ways, these automated systems are taking the art out of buying and making it pure maths, with people picking the best prices online.

Advertising consultant Martin Gillman said it was possible to rule out some media from automatic buying systems, but this had to be a proactive decision.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Derek Lindsay is head of the media committee for the advertising agency body CAANZ, and believes that while there are still a few tweaks being made, the system of automated buying is working. "We had a meeting about this recently, though nothing to do with Whale Oil."

He said most ad agencies used automated digital buying, though they handled things in differing ways. Basically, it worked as a bidding system for online advertising. "It's a joint responsibility between advertisers and their agency to deal with problems."

Lindsay declined to comment on the situation with Whale Oil, where advertisers who have withdrawn are being chided on the site, but said advertisers were able to stipulate which sites they would not appear on.

"Some people do not want to be associated with sites that have violence or porn. Political sites might be different, some advertisers will be concerned about that and some will not."

In my opinion, it seems a much more laissez faire approach to media buying than the traditional way, but Lindsay says it works well.

The automated approach is a marked contrast to buying space in mainstream media, which are less likely to be contentious and where special deals and the advertising and brand associations are more important.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.


DIFFERENT STROKES
It has been intriguing to see the reasoned response of opinion-makers to the Kill the Prime Minister song, and compare it with the witch-hunt against John Tamihere, which led to the broadcaster being sacked from RadioLive.

In this latest case, there have been questions about taxpayer support for the band @Peace, though this was unreasonable since the NZ On Air support was for the band, not the song. There was some chiding over the sexual references to the Prime Minister's daughter, Steffi Key, and the obligatory cries of FFS. But overall, it was a sane response.

This was in marked contrast to the media storm that blew up over Tamihere, with the left approaching advertisers to withdraw from RadioLive and attacking Tamihere, Willie Jackson and anyone who dared suggest there were freedom of speech issues involved.

That issue came down to whether Tamihere asked the wrong questions of an unnamed young girl who called in to his and Jackson's radio show over the Roastbusters allegations. While this person - Amy - has disappeared from sight, it appears that she was actually known to the broadcasters.

The transgressions were much less direct than those by @Peace. Admittedly, there wasn't much that could be done to the band, which now seems to see how crass the song was. But songwriter Tom Scott is a talented individual and the telling off was all that was required.

However, when you compare the case with that of Tamihere, you can't help but think the vigilantes are more concerned about who does wrong things, not their actual transgressions.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Mighty relief over Power Rangers

There was widespread relief around Auckland film and TV production firms with the signing of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to return to New Zealand to make the next series.

The show - which screens in 150 countries - has been filmed here for 10 series.

Photo / Alastair Grant

Many hope its return will just be the first payoff from new, generous taxpayer subsidies that are encouraging US productions to come Downunder, though the high value of the New Zealand dollar against the greenback is still a disincentive.

Film Auckland chairman Pete Rive said last year had been hard for many people in the production sector, and the news had prompted cheers.

Film Commission chief executive Dave Gibson has also welcomed the return of the show, saying it had provided many work opportunities for New Zealand crews and talent.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Evidence of that was made clear a couple of months ago when Tom Hern, producer of the new movie The Dark Horse, which has been enjoying rapturous acclaim, said he and writer-director James Napier Robertson both started out as teen stars on The Tribe, then took parts in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, before moving on.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Media and marketing

Markets with Madison

'Look mom, I made it to Times Square!': How Kiwi brand-tracking company celebrated a major milestone

10 Jul 07:00 PM
Business|companies

Entrepreneur Bowen Pan on why he returned to NZ

Business|companies

Silicon Valley to NZ: Kiwi Facebook Marketplace inventor is back home to give back

05 Jul 12:00 AM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Media and marketing

'Look mom, I made it to Times Square!': How Kiwi brand-tracking company celebrated a major milestone

'Look mom, I made it to Times Square!': How Kiwi brand-tracking company celebrated a major milestone

10 Jul 07:00 PM

The co-founders reveal the software start-up's global growth figures.

Entrepreneur Bowen Pan on why he returned to NZ

Entrepreneur Bowen Pan on why he returned to NZ

Silicon Valley to NZ: Kiwi Facebook Marketplace inventor is back home to give back

Silicon Valley to NZ: Kiwi Facebook Marketplace inventor is back home to give back

05 Jul 12:00 AM
Premium
'Struggle' - TV series producers on problems filming around Queenstown

'Struggle' - TV series producers on problems filming around Queenstown

26 Jun 11:00 PM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP