Where are you advertising today?

Once upon a time, marketers decided where to place their ads based solely on demographics. If it met the demographic requirements for a reasonable price, it was a good place to advertise.

Then, marketers started to demand measurability - was the cost of the advertising space reflected in the response rates and conversions?

Finally, the demographic bit back. In I'm With The Brand, Rob Walker writes that Timberland was forced to rethink its media strategy when it's demographic - hip hop fans - objected that it wasn't supporting their choice of media through its advertising expenditure.

Advertising is no longer simply about finding the kind of customers you are looking for - it's a statement of brand values by association. Waitrose has pulled its advertising from Fox News because a customer complained that their advertising was supporting the controversial presenter Glenn Beck's programme. The Daily Mail was forced to remove the advertising stream completely from Jan Moir's article about Stephen Gately after brands such as M&S asked to have their branding removed.

People expect brands to stand for something these days - and for that something to be carried across into all their activities throughout the value chain, including advertising. Yet advertising is often bought in bulk or, as with the Google ads on this blog page, selected thematically without advertiser input. It's the one area where our customers are demanding action, and which we are not properly in a position to control.

Now, looking at it cynically, all the advertisers (and in particular M&S and Waitrose) have benefited a lot more by publicly removing their advertising from places that don't fit the brand than if they had quietly chosen not to advertise there in the first place. But if we want our brands to have a moral core for our customers to identify with, we need to write an Advertising Standards Code of our own.

What do we want to support with our advertising spend?
What do we actively want to avoid?
How can we get our customers involved in shaping it? 
How can we ensure our media buyers can and do implement it?