Jaguar Land Rover confirms global media review and clarifies response to terror ad misplacement
Jaguar Land Rover is currently reviewing its global media agencies across its media strategy, planning and buying services as it disregards reports that it had made wholesale changes to its media plans in light of a an investigation that claimed to find its ads next to harmful content.
Jaguar Land Rover to call global media review
Plans for the review have been in motion "for some time," with a source confirming to The Drum that the plans have been discussed since at least January.
The company has also addressed what another spokesperson described as the "unconnected issue," of resuming advertising online after an investigation revealed it was funding terror organisations without its knowledge, prompting it to freeze some digital ads.
The automaker was one of several brands named by the Times last week to have been inadvertently opening up revenue streams for terrorists and white supremacists by advertising on their sites and next to their videos on YouTube.
The firm, however, has said that the global media review falls in line with its existing agency agreement, implying that it's not a knee-jerk reaction to the Times' programmatic revelations.
"Jaguar Land Rover has announced a global agency review across its media strategy, planning and buying services in line with the completion of the existing agency agreement," said a spokesperson.
"This review is in accordance with Jaguar Land Rover's usual sourcing best practice and reflects the company's commitment to conduct business in an open and fair way."
He finished: "Jaguar Land Rover considers its suppliers to be integral to business success. Our supplier relationships help us to develop products that surprise and delight our customers and deliver our brand visions."
Jaguar Land Rover consolidated its brand communications into Jaguar's venture agency, Spark44, in 2015. However, WPP's Mindshare has been the media agency on record for Jaguar Land Rover since 2000 when it was owned by Ford. The Drum has reached out to agency for comment but at the time of writing it had not responded.
The Times reported yesterday (14 February) that Jaguar Land Rover had added new mechanisms in the UK in response to its 'programmatic terror' report, but the company told The Drum that this isn't the case and that it had simply carried out "close checks" on the measures it already had in place.
While the Times claims to have found an ad for the Jaguar F-Pace YouTube next to a pro-Islamic State video, the car marque said it found no evidence of this, but did find one in a YouTube-approved video containing Islamic music.