back to article Facebook gets Weed-whacked: Unilever exec may axe ads over social network's toxic posts

In a highly unusual public rebuke, monster-company Unilever gave Facebook both barrels over its "toxic content" – and threatened to pull its advertising from the antisocial network. Speaking today at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Desert, California, Unilever's chief marketing officer …

  1. fluffybunnyuk
    Happy

    Tragic news...I'm beside myself in anguish :)

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Indeed.

      Unilever, the commercial version of "SPECTRE".

  2. kain preacher

    Damn it there goes FB stock.

    1. Mark 85

      Well... dump it now and be ahead of things.

  3. Dwarf

    Advertise more on social media !!

    Seriously - keep it up, put all your budget into that. All the time you are advertising on social media sites, then that's less chance that I'll see the adverts elsewhere *

    * Notwithstanding the ad blocker on all machines I use and neural response that causes an immediate close on things like YouTube if it interrupts me with a pointless advert. I'm quite able to go shopping without having seen a single advert.

    The irony is that the more the companies advertise, the higher the cost of the items are that we buy, since all those sunk costs are hidden in the price we pay. I'd prefer the alternative - don't advertise and let me buy the product that are best at the cheaper prices, where "best" is determined by real reputation, not how much you can splash on trying to annoy me with adverts.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "We are a million miles from the internet we envisioned,"

    Coming from a marketer, that could well be a very good thing indeed.

    Although Google appear to have got the internet they envisioned, packaging us all up and selling us on.

    1. Oh Homer
      Big Brother

      Re: "We are a million miles from the internet we envisioned,"

      Not really. The marketeers envisioned an internet riddled with spam, and the internet is indeed riddled with spam.

      The problem, only from the spammers' perspective mind you, is that nobody actually likes spam, and most of us would rather gouge out our eyeballs with a dentist's drill than endure surfing a tsunami of spam, even for just five minutes. Fortunately we don't have to go that far, as we have far less painful solutions.

      So I guess what the marketeers really mean is "we are a million miles from the plot of A Clockwork Orange, in which a captive audience of brainwashed consumers, restrained and lid-locked, is force-fed a steady diet of spam against its will, then slavishly hands over all of its money".

      Yes, thankfully.

  5. Teiwaz

    I wonder how many of those actually existing 41 million 18 to 24s are still using the facebeast....

    And how many of the non-existant 10 million are actually rabbits* running around Zucks head.

    * For Dougal Mcguire fans. Fans of Dougals Adams Long dark teatime may want to substitute penguins.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge
      Linux

      I always want to substitute penguins :)

      They would do better than out national football team...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "I wonder how many of those actually existing 41 million 18 to 24s are still using the facebeast...."

      Several publications are reporting today that FB lost around 3 million of the under 25 demographic in 2017.

    3. werdsmith Silver badge

      I wonder how many of those actually existing 41 million 18 to 24s are still using the facebeast....

      My two teens see Faecebook as an old person's thing.

      I see it as a place where Jeremy Kyle guests like to attention-seek and lifestyle-fake.

      Either way, the stigma is such now that many people who still use it are reluctant to admit it.

  6. Mark 85

    My feeling is that at some point Zuck will come to his senses, park his ego in his back pocket, and pull a Tom of Myspace and sell the beast. This may take awhile given "ego" and "senses"... but lately (in the last month or so) I rarely hear people asking if I'm on FB. I guess they realize it's a waste of time to use it and/or they're tired of the ads and the FB sponsored BS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'sell the beast'

      Doubt it! Zuk is vastly becoming the Bill Gates of our time. Even with that vast warchest he doesn't have the charm or charisma or imagination to something interesting with his $$$. It comes out in quarterly conference calls. Batting for advertisers is all he knows!

      1. 101

        Re: 'sell the beast'

        Gates offered a donation of 100,000 chickens to Bolivia.*

        How can Zuck beat that for class?

        *(which gratuitously turned the offer down, since they already export chickens; next target: Africa.)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "As one of the largest advertisers in the world, we cannot have an environment where our consumers don’t trust what they see online,"

    I can see how that would be a problem for them.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    an environment where our consumers don’t trust what they see online

    Hmm. It's not just what I *see* online, it's what exotic and mysteriously sourced set of scripts that get served to - and run by - my browser, that I don't really feel I can trust. I don't suppose there is any reference to concerns about that in the speech, is there?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Erosion Of Trust

    Not a fan or even a user of Facebook, but you write...

    "Facebook gets Weed-whacked: Unilever exec may axe ads over social network's toxic posts"

    "Huge advertiser threatens to turn off Zuck's money tap"

    "Unilever's chief marketing officer Keith Weed used his keynote speech to blast the Mark Zuckerberg-run Facebook"

    ...yet he didn't mention Facebook or Zuckerberg at all in the speech.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Erosion Of Trust

      To be fair, the article mentions that. And says that the speech was handed to journalists beforehand with specific mention of Facebook. This is often how politicians work. You're less specific on the record, in the speech, but brief the meaning to the journalists who're going to cover it.

      This obviously means you have to trust the journalists in question, that they're not just making shit up. So you'll have to make a judgement on how reliable you think El Reg are.

      But as the Beeb and Guardian (that I've seen) have also taken the same line, that is a further confirmation that El Reg are on the level - if you still feel you need it.

      I'd say that makes it look pretty clear that Uniliver are firing a shot across Facebook's bow. Of course this could just be part of some price negotiations currently going on, trying to get a bit of extra leverage. Or it could be a genuine comment from a huge advertiser that's getting pissed off. I've heard a lot of late about "brand safety" from advertisers - they don't like the idea of their ads being shown next to ISIS beheading footage on Youtube for example.

      Also I remember one of the big car companies (Ford?) left Facebook 3 or 4 years ago, because they said the advertising seemed to be useless - plus they didn't like their ads being shown next to Russian brides ads and "win a free iPad" scam adverts.

  10. YetAnotherJoeBlow

    Unilever's Weed

    Not available in my country.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Just say no

    Adverts on t'interwebs you say? OpenDNS, Ghostery, uBlock, Nano Defender and Magic Action for YouTube say no.

  12. Adrian 4

    easy come, easy go

    All such networks have had their time and died. Facebook hasn't lasted longer than the others, it only had a peak population that was higher - and that's more to do with the size of the net than the attraction of facebook.

    The higher you go, the further you fall.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Money Talks - This is all bullshit!

    It made no difference to FB's share price. Critics, pull your money out of FB or STFU. This is all just corp strategy, a cynical move to force Facebook to offer better terms next time (while playing the socially-conscious-PR-card)!

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: Money Talks - This is all bullshit!

      Partially true, but smart brand managers care deeply about what their brand is associated with and thus its image. Bad branding and ad placement ultimately means less sales as customers associate your brand with something unsavory. Not a winning strategy. Unilever is telling Fraudbook to get its act together or else. Fraudbook needs Unilever more than Unilever needs them. Advertising on Fraudbook or any other site is only part Unilever's overall marketing strategy.

      John Wannamaker commented he did knew have is advertising budget was wasted but he did not know which half it was.

      1. Alien8n

        Re: Money Talks - This is all bullshit!

        A brand can turn sour overnight. Just ask Gerald Ratner.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Money Talks - This is all bullshit!

      Anon,

      It could be that they're just in the middle of price negotiations, and Unilever are giving FB a public kicking to get the fees down. But this is a funny way to do it.

      There's a tradition in the US to go after the advertisers. If you think there's too much nudity/swears in a TV show say, you can complain to the TV company - but you can also write to sponsors. No advertiser wants to be pissing off their potential customers - or to look bad. So they threaten to withdraw, and the TV company backs down. I've noticed quite a lot of campaigners recently trying similar tactics. If you can make something look like bad PR for a company and it's only a small amount of their business, it might look too expensive to be worth doing.

  14. Uncle Ron

    Some say...

    Some say 10's of thousands of fake FB accounts were created over the last 5 to 10 years by hackers from the old Eastern Block. With activity and content directed from the Kremlin. From those accounts, 'likes' and 're-posts' and 'shares' by the millions made their way into the West with the purpose of causing confusion, shaping opinion, and spreading false news stories. In the end, these carefully and brilliantly planned activities generally made some things seem much more important than they are, some things much less, and some of the insanity was totally fabricated. The beneficiary of this chaos was not the Right, or the Left, or any particular 'movement.' The objective was (and still is) to make governments and institutions in the West seem weaker and less legitimate. Who benefits from this? The balance between East and West is a zero-sum game. If the West crumbles into chaos and illegitimacy, who gains? It's much, much cheaper to do this than to build armies and buy missiles. The old KGB master is a fucking genius.

    Here's the real, real rub IMHO: FB could, should, and probably still doesn't, know and care that this is happening, where it is coming from, and how to stop it in it's tracks, along with all sorts of other misuse an abuse of it's pathways. Hell, if I had access to their insides, I could stop it in 24 hours. All of it. All the hate and lies and phony 'news' stories, and phony accounts--all of it. Why haven't they?

    1. P. Lee

      Re: Some say...

      Fake accounts, real accounts... what's the difference?

      Real stories, fake stories; persuasion and manipulation - does it actually matter if the origin is the Kremlin or the US?

      The West's problem is that it has rotted from the inside - it has abandoned its moral compass and descended into partisanship. No-one is pleased or supports the other team when they do something good or call out their own side when they do something wrong. This situation is poisonous to both morality and effective government. Both sides become invested in narratives and influence rather than reality and acting morally. That pushes them to undermine anything that would expose them. Critical thinking has to go so that The Cult of Party can go on.

      The good news is that I think the rot is far deeper in the media and academia than in society in general. The bad news is society in general gets very little voice and battling the media and education establishments in all their forms is very difficult.

      1. Uncle Ron

        Re: Some say...

        Sorry P., I have to ask you, "Who or what do you think is responsible for what you are describing?" The very "rot" you are describing is -exactly- the objective of all these phony activities. And of course it matters who is at the tiller. Our (the West) economic and political adversaries are fomenting the very confusion, division, and "rot" you describe. I agree that politicians and others in power take advantage of this increased noise level--they're genetically programmed to do so--but the noise level isn't real. It's fabricated by people who aren't on -either- side, and don't play for either "team," and only care about sowing the very social and political weeds you describe.

        Smart people in the intelligence and espionage profession agree, and are publicly testifying today, that everything I said in my OP is true. Those that own the pathways that this "rot" is traveling through have a lot to answer for. It is not only FB, it is Twitter and other social media sites, -and- ISP's who knowingly host phony "news" sites. And yes, legitimate media who regularly pick up and run with questionable stuff. It stinks. The malicious players in this scenario are already working ferociously on (in addition to other things) significantly impacting the 2018 US Congressional elections. The US intelligence community is convinced of these facts, and are testifying before Congress TODAY about it. The danger is that those who got into power as a result of this interference will be likely to do nothing about it.

    2. 101

      Re: Some say...

      Isn't everything on FB fake?

  15. Aladdin Sane

    By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

    (Kill yourself.)

    Seriously though, if you are, do.

    Aaah, no really. There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself.

    Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good.

    Seriously.

    No this is not a joke. You’re [going], “There’s going to be a joke coming.” There’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself

    Planting seeds.

    I know all the marketing people are going, “He’s doing a joke…” There’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. (Machi…) Whatever, you know what I mean.

    I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too: “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing? He’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market. He’s very smart.”

    Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking, evil scumbags!

    “Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now? He’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.”

    Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.

    “Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. Bill’s very bright to do that.”

    God, I’m just caught in a fucking web.

    “Ooh, the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…”

    How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?

    “What didya do today, honey?”

    “Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight.” [snores] “Yeah we just said, you know, is your baby really too loud? You know?” [snores] “Yeah, you know the mums will love it.” [snores]

    Sleep like fucking children, don’t ya. This is your world, isn’t it?

    - Bill Hicks

    1. Uncle Ron

      WTF

      Bill, WTF are you talking about? Your post is nonsense.

  16. Wolfclaw

    Zuck will soon be paying a visit and be on his knees in seconds and will be a good a Zucker to keep them happy !

  17. Timmy B

    What's worse?

    Moany fake news on facebook or child workers and rainforest destruction?

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: What's worse?

      What do you mean by child workers?

      In the UK we now make school compulsory until 18. And regard anyone under 18 as a child.

      The leaving age was 16 when I was growing up. And working from age 16 was normal. Are 16 year-olds children?

      In the late 50s my Dad left school at 14, and went into a job as an apprentice electrician. With 2 days a week at college. By the time he was 16 he was doing week long jobs around the country and him and his crew often slept in the back of their van so they could keep the room expenses they were paid by their company. Was he then a child at 14?

      100 years ago most British people didn't go into secondary education. And so started working around 12 ish.

      So Western companies shouldn't go into developing countries and take the piss. But on the other hand, those countries are going to develop by growing their economies in order to be able to afford to educate their kids for longer, and to have decent healthcare, pensions and the like. A balance needs to be struck here.

      It's nice and easy to use emotive language about child exploitation, but to take an example if you have 14 year-old workers in a factory that do limited hours and get an hour of schooling a day and that's better than prevailing conditions in their society - are you doing something immoral? Even if you don't do the schooling, but are giving their families cash, and therefore the choice of paying for the healthcare/schooling/whatever that they think they need - there's an argument that even that isn't wrong.

      1. Timmy B

        Re: What's worse?

        "What do you mean by child workers?"

        Children between the ages of 8 and 14 that are used on palm oil plantations. You seem to be arguing that this is ok as it gets them money. But a little money in the short term and denying them the ability, through education, to get far more in the long term is surely wrong. Or would you say it's fine for your children to go back down the pits or up the chimneys?

      2. onefang

        Re: What's worse?

        "Are 16 year-olds children?"

        If I recall correctly, here in Australia 16 year olds can have sex and drive, but not drink or watch porn. So I'd say that's half adult and half child. Though it does leave me wondering how we expect these 16 year olds to learn how to do sex properly if they are not allowed to watch it. Should they wear blind folds, or just do it in the dark? Might explain all those teenage pregnancies if they are accidentally putting the condom on their partners big toe, coz they can't see where it should go.

        I don't think they can vote either, which might explain why the laws about drinking and watching porn haven't changed.

  18. Craigie

    Faecebook is not a good look

    Advertising on Faecebook is 'bad for the brand' in my book as you are giving money to Faecebook.

  19. msknight

    Advertisers only have themselves to blame

    They are still reliant on the old, expired model of advertising... the hang over from the TV era.

    These days, they need to go viral and make adverts that entertain and get people talking. Who doesn't know, "Will it blend?"

    The companies have failed to engage with the modern audience and run with the times. The old advertising model doesn't cut it any more.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Advertisers only have themselves to blame

      I disagree. Only some viral marketing can work. People only have so much time and space in their heads to waste on that kind of stuff. Plus it's really difficult to do.

      You don't even need to be funny to succeed. The Gold Blend "soap opera" will-they-won't-they thing in the 80s/90s worked, even got on the front page of the tabloids, and that wasn't funny. Or Ronseal's: It does exactly what it says on the tin. Which has now become part of the language.

      So some ads can do that. Some can succeed by just being ubiquitous and annoying, eg Daz + Mr Motivator. Tactics can differ. But in the end, it's all about being noticed. I don't believe the audience has changed.

      I think the problem is all about delivery. TV audiences aren't actually smaller, they're just more fragmented. No longer to 30% of the population watch the same program at the same time. Except for big sporting events sometimes.

      Also TV and Radio had independent metrics. Companies that tell advertisers roughly who's watching what. Google and Facebook "mark their own homework". And have been caught lying (e.g. FB with 10m fake US teens, or Google with fake clicks). So the advertisers have to spread themselves over a wider area to attract fewer people and can't trust their delivery platforms. Hence their complaints.

      1. onefang

        Re: Advertisers only have themselves to blame

        "The Gold Blend ... Ronseal's ... Daz ... Mr Motivator"

        Never heard of any of the brands / companies you mentioned. Though perhaps they are not available in my country?

    2. Aitor 1

      Re: Advertisers only have themselves to blame

      It works.

      The main problem I see is that they have only partially updated themselves. They mostly dont want to pay a dime for brand recognition, so they dont pay for "impressions", they just play for clicks.. and that is wrong

      As for engaging ads.. well, that is also bad, as they want to engage, yes, but in a bad way, and they are just more subtle spam.

    3. onefang

      Re: Advertisers only have themselves to blame

      'Who doesn't know, "Will it blend?"'

      I don't. And if it's advertising related, I don't want to know. Mind you, that's likely due to decades of avoiding advertising like the plague that it is.

  20. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

    If only companies spending billions on advertising could engage agencies that didn't produce adverts that suck, that would be nice. Stop with the lifestyle BS, and poppy, upbeat formulaic nonsense. I'm sure perfume and car ads don't _have_ to suck. Hell, I remember the simple VW Golf advert from the 80s where they dropped the Golf into shot, and it bounced on it's suspension, and the narrator got in it and drove off. That was creative. No eurovision happy pop, no photogenic 20-somethings acting 'cool', no cinematographic landscape shots of the car in an environment that few people are ever likely to drive in, or implying that owning the car helps you avoid traffic and find nifty short cuts through back alleys.

    OK, I'm going to stop now,.... I hate adverts and could rant for ages.

  21. Lotaresco

    For a moment there...

    I had the hope that Unilever were referring to not wanting to be associated with a social media platform that promotes misogyny, racism, right wing extremism and jihadist murder. But no, it seems that their complaint is that people on social media are too savvy to believe marketing bullshit uncritically or that when a bullshit advert appears people call out its bullshit and that stops other consumers from being suckered. Boo Hoo.

  22. Lotaresco

    Effective Ad campaigns

    I'm wondering if the main problem from the advertiser's point of view is that social media does something that "traditional" advertising can't do which is to provide immediate feedback - people tell you to your face that your product sucks - and metrics that directly relate to how good or bad your advertising is - people tell you to your face that your advertising sucks.

    Broadcast media don't give that relationship between what you say and do and what "the people" think about it. We've all been shouting abuse at the TV Screen or turning the pages of the paper and sighing or looking at the poster and tutting but none of the media morons received that information. All they could do was run "focus groups" assembled from people who want to be in a focus group or make indirect measurements of the effect of adverts that fail to account for other factors.

    Now they get a direct link and their carefully built legends about what they do and how useful it is and it shows them what they don't want to know.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Effective Ad campaigns

      Shouldn't that be good? From the point of view of Unilever's marketing department at least. If you're a campaign designer it might be bad, but as the people commissioning campaigns, Unilever can then turn to their ad agency and say "our viewers thought your ad was shit - buck your ideas up or we sack you."

  23. 101
    Meh

    Any flavor you want, as long as it's vanilla

    I think this is about corporate ad agencies are moving to work with monolith marketing corporations FB/Google/Et al to clean up the net so they avoid liability, PR disasters and appearances of supporting un-PC content with iron-fist censorship.

    Also, they will join the big marketing corporations to oppose any kind of privacy legislation that might prevent them from intimate, panoptic mass surveillance.

    This fake kerfuffle is all part of the plan.

    The goal is to make sure users are powerless to resist marketing and have access only to pre- approved plain vanilla news and content.

    In short, it's about the money. It's always about the money.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Any flavor you want, as long as it's vanilla

      Of course it's about the money. If you like Facebook, then you're getting a service you like for free. Same with Google. But Facebook and Google have costs. And they recoup that from advertising.

      Same with TV. There's a difference here though. You have alternatives you can pay for. People like HBO, Amazon, Netflix etc.

      The difference is that the internet market doesn't seem to have matured in the same way yet.

      But it looks like it might happen in news. We, as customers, have helped to destroy our news media - by not paying for it. Leaving them reliant only on advertising. OK, it's also their own fault for only offering us that route online. Also advertising doesn't pay enough, and so they dropped quality in order to make their costs work out - and that made the problem worse. But people are starting to realise that you get what you pay for. If you want fact-checked (spell-checked) news, you're probably going to have to pay for it.

      It maybe impossible to do this with a social network. How do you compete with free? But if you want to be the customer, and not the product, you'll have to pay.

  24. Patrician
    Facepalm

    "Without trust, there is no data and without data there is no brand." ....

    Bless him, he (Weed) really believes we "trust" adverts ....

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Lots of people do. I've heard people say, "they're not allowed to lie in an advert, so that must be true." When I was arguing a product was unsuitable for something. In general UK adverst are true, for a given value of true - and bearing in mind they mostly tell the truth - but don't have to tell the whole truth.

      Also people do trust brands. For a given value of trust of course. It's all very well trying to one-up people with your sophistication and cynism. But I do trust Coke to sell sugared fizzy water that has been checked to make sure it doesn't contain poisons. That's actually quite a lot of trust, and something that Chinese consumers can't say. Which is why there's a big demand in China for Western food brands - because the local ones might just put any old shit in stuff.

      McDonalds didn't get big because it was the nicest food out there. They stay big by promoting to children of course. But originally by being known as reliably sameish across the country. So if you were in a new town you could risk a local cafe (which might be nice or horrible), or just play safe and go to McDonalds, for the devil you know. Stuff like TripAdvisor ought to diminish the power of restaurant chains over time - though I doubt many people check reviews on cafes for a quick lunch.

      But that's what most brands are. Playing it safe. I could buy that french wine, and it might be extraordinary, or a bit rubbish. It'll be in the style of its terroir. Or I could have some Aussie £5 in the supermarkets known brand like say Hardy's. It's not going to be amazing, but it'll reliably taste the same this year as it did last, and I know it'll be OK.

      I shop at Sainsbury's not Tesco because I buy a lot of own brand stuff. And I've had some horrible Tesco own brand (and I'm not talking about the value stuff here). But Sainsbury's has in my experience been of a decent quality. So I'm effectively trusting Sainsbury's buying team. In my opinion they've gone up in price more than others in the last couple of years, so I'm slowly abandoning them, but haven't yet plumped for another supermarket brand I "trust" - so buy a bit from them, a bit from other places. But in the end I'll probably plump for one brand, in order to have the ease of shopping at one place for everthing, and trade-off cost/niceness as I decide suits me.

  25. emmanuel goldstein

    Damn,

    I wish I was called Keith Weed.

  26. nijam Silver badge

    Not that I'm a fan (or even user) of Facebook, but surely there some irony in a Unilever marketer making these criticisms. Perhaps what was really meant was "Facebook advertising is too expensive"?

  27. The Nazz

    A cautionary tale re Brands

    Opp north there is a Rugby League team , the Bradford Bulls previously Bradford Northern. With limited periods of being highly successful.

    In recent years, they have had multiple problems and administrations.

    They were then taken over with Bradford's "Marketing person of the year" in a prominent role.

    "The brand, it's a brand, get behind the brand" she exalted the public.

    Darling, love, hun, whatever, IT'S a sport, a working class sport of rugby league for northeners.

    The outcome? Last year they dropped down yet another division, not far from total obscurity.

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