Hannaford Kills TV Commercials After Station Reports On Data Breach
Written by Evan SchumanSaying only that a TV station’s news coverage of its data breach was too “aggressive,” the Hannaford grocery chain has canceled its commercials from the Portland, Maine, CBS affiliate. The station, which announced Hannaford’s decision on its own news site, said the chain declined to cite any errors or problems with the coverage.
This is a baffler. You have a media outlet in your community that is saying accurate but not nice things about you. What’s the response? Make sure you give up the one way you can give your side of the story by pulling your ads.
I always get in trouble when I say this, but a better approach is to pull your ads from media that are already saying your side of the story for free and use that money to buy twice the ads on the other sources. That way, you get your message aired where it needs to be heard most. But that’s a lot less fun than punishing people who stay stuff you’d rather not be said.