In my #brandmanagement class I teach that brand purpose is BS unless it costs you money.
The Guardian puts that notion on display with their global ban on taking advertising from gambling companies.
Y’all might not think this matters much because people should be able to gamble if they want to. (I totally like playing poker so I’m not anti-gambling.)
But we’ve seen around the globe tremendous amounts of gambling addictions and financial ruin.
Check out Rob Davies’s book on the topic to read some of the stories in the UK.
But this does matter because governments and businesses around the world have taken a YOLO approach to gambling and gambling ads and then found the downside impacts to be more catastrophic than people were led to believe.
Once the door is open, governments have struggled to act and react quickly enough and before they can take action, many lives are already destroyed.
This has become an issue because the gambling money has been easy money for governments in the form of tax revenues, for businesses that sell ad space, and for #sportsbiz as partners.
Mostly, this proves the point that if it doesn’t cost you money…it isn’t brand purpose is bull.
What do y’all think?
Here’s the article announcing the change.