By winning the battle against GARM, Elon Musk will lose the war

Today, leaders in the advertising world made a huge decision: They chose to shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Media instead of take on legal attacks from Elon Musk and Rumble.

It looks like advertising leaders like PepsiCo and Mastercard want so badly to stay away from Elon Musk that they would rather close the brand safety working group GARM than deal with his bullying.

Wait, what's going on? 

This week, in a video that was widely mocked for sounding like something that would blare from loudspeakers in a dystopia, Elon Musk’s X announced it was suing several major advertising groups.

This included the World Federation of Advertisers, which is the advertising trade group that put together the Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative, and several major brands including Unilever, Mars, and CVS.

X’s argument is that these companies were conspiring to shun the social media platform and intentionally make it lose money. Because, of course, the problem couldn’t actually be that brands find X, you know, unsafe.

It has to be a conspiracy.

Why GARM, and why now? 

Just over a month ago, X was loudly proclaiming how “proud” it was to be a reinstated member of GARM. Now, they’re suing the folks behind GARM. So what changed?

While we don’t know the specifics of GARM’s relationship with X, we do know one thing: GARM has come under heavy fire from multiple angles in recent weeks.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan led the charge against the initiative. Jordan has been a loud proponent and investigator of the theory that private enterprises, like social media companies, have been censoring right-wing voices.

On July 10, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs, dropped an interim report with the catchy title “GARM’s harm: how the world’s biggest brands seek to control online speech.”

The report alleges a GARM member said that GARM recommended its members stop “all paid advertisement” on Twitter — though later in the report, they also write that GARM leadership clearly told the GARM member they never made that recommendation.

An excerpt from the House report.

Despite this inaccuracy, X’s lawsuit leans heavily on this report’s findings.

That same day, political pundit Ben Shapiro testified before the committee. In his written testimony, Shapiro alleged the group’s brand safety standards concerning "harassment," "misinformation," or "hate speech" are “subjective” and “highly partisan” and called on Congress to investigate “censorship cartels like GARM.”

All the while, the New York Post steadily churned out articles attacking GARM, calling its initiative lead Rob Rakowitz a “fascist creep” and referring to GARM itself as a “left-leaning advertising cartel.”

The target was firmly set on GARM over the last month. Then X swept in and pulled the trigger.

So how do advertisers protect their brand?

The online outrage machine is most effective when it singles out its prey and brings its full force down upon it. 

Look at Bud Light, for example, or Target, which both faced boycotts and rage from the public after pundits put the target on their foreheads. But brands can come out on top when they’re free to choose where their money goes and push back against bad-faith attacks.

We’ve seen brands successfully defend themselves before.

After our co-founder, Nandini Jammi, and her past organization Sleeping Giants informed Kellogg’s they were running ads on the white nationalist website Breitbart in 2016, Kellogg’s pulled its ads.

Breitbart, Kellogg’s said, didn’t align with its values — and the decision, the company added, had “nothing to do with politics.” But Breitbart threw a temper tantrum. It declared “war” on Kellogg’s.

Apparently, according to Breitbart, advertisers can’t choose who they’d like to give their money to. That sounds an awfully lot like Musk and GARM, doesn’t it? 

If Kellogg’s had been alone in ditching Breitbart, I think I’d be writing a different story here today. But instead, when Breitbart launched its attack on the company, other advertisers also ran for the exit.

While brands might have different thresholds for what they’re willing to associate with, they have one thing in common: They all want the freedom to choose where their ad spend goes. When brands stick together in the face of bullies demanding their money, they defend that principle.

They defend their ability to choose who they give their money to, and who they don’t. Because when one company is bullied into running ads on a platform that isn’t aligned with its values, that puts every brand at risk of facing the same thing.

Today it’s Kellogg’s, Mars, Unilever, and CVS — who will it be tomorrow?

What will happen next?

The reality is, today’s decision means even more advertisers will flee X, and quickly, so they’re not targeted in the future.

Everyone can see that advertising on X is a treacherous business relationship for advertisers. And we know, based on public reporting, X doesn’t have all that many too lose.

The upside to today’s news is that advertisers will no longer rely on GARM and will now take more direct responsibility over where their ads appear. This is a fast-moving industry.

With this change, consumers, advertisers, news publishers, and even regulators have an opportunity to set new clear standards for how the internet should be governed.

This change does not mean that ads will start sponsoring hate again. In fact, the opposite is true: brands and their employees are more clear than ever about what they want to be associated with — and what they want to avoid.

 Hugs,

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