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The media planning policy of T-Mobile has come under fire by the company’s own CEO, Robert Dotson, who insisted the company pull its ad off Fox’s FX shows Rescue Me and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, claiming that the channel’s content was “inconsistent with who we are and what we stand for,” writes AdAge. The outburst came after Don Wildmon and his American Family Association bombarded Dotson’s inbox with emails complaining about the company’s support of the FX shows.
Dotson sent a letter to the association, writing that “I have personally taken the time to view some of the programs where we have run advertising. Candidly, some of the choices we have made are clearly inconsistent with who we are and what we stand for.”
His letter outlined changes, saying that T-Mobile would remove advertising from the FX channel pending further review of the programming and that it would conduct a deeper review of advertising standards.
Last November, Toyota pulled ads from FX’s show Nip/Tuck after being pressured by a letter-writing campaign from the advocacy group Parents Television Council. The group claimed the show was sexually explicit, profane, and violent. Gateway and Coors pulled advertising from the show in 2003.
While the American Family Association makes a habit of going after advertisers in shows that the association finds offensive, the T-Mobile response surprised even the director of special projects and education for the Association, Randy Sharp. “This is extremely unusual, a first in a long, long time, where a major corporate CEO actually takes time to listen to concerns and makes a personal statement,” he is quoted as saying.
A T-Mobile spokesperson later told Advertising Age that Dotson’s comments weren’t meant to imply that the company was unhappy with Optimedia, which handles media buying for the company.
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