Web Summit boycott underlines danger of mixing business and politics

He found himself at the center of an extraordinary backlash after he accused Israel of war crimes. Israel, in response, announced it will boycott the event, which was expected to attract 70,000 delegates.

In his tweet, sent on October 13, Cosgrave said: “I’m shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders and governments, with the exception in particular of Ireland’s government, who for once did the right thing. War crimes, even when committed by allies, should be called out for what they are.”

Dor Shapira, the Israeli ambassador to Portugal, not only informed the mayor of Lisbon that his country would not take part but called on others to boycott the event.

He said in a statement: “Today, I wrote to the mayor of Lisbon informing him that Israel will not participate in the #WebSummit conference due to the outrageous statements made by the conference CEO, Paddy Cosgrave.

“Even during these difficult times, he is unable to set aside his extreme political views and denounce the Hamas terrorist activities against innocent people. Dozens of companies have already canceled their participation in this conference, and we encourage more to do so. We should have zero tolerance to terrorist and terror acts!”

It is significant as Israel is very much at the heart of the tech ecosystem, and several industry leaders responded by canceling their appearances and attendances, including Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator; Ori Goshen, co-CEO of AI21 Labs; Ravi Gupta, a partner at Sequoia; Keith Peiris, CEO of Tome; Adam Singolda, head of advertising company Taboola; and David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and former PayPal chief executive.

Singolda responded to the Cosgrave tweet by saying: “A week into the war, when mothers are seeing their babies burned alive by terrorists when nearly 200 people are still kept hostage, away from their families, when Hamas, which is worse than ISIS and Nazis combined because even Hitler didn’t burn babies... is just not a good time Paddy. I’ll repeat, it’s not a good time to be ‘right,’ and you’re just wrong.”

The sense of outrage is palpable online, and there is a sense that other speakers are now pulling out for fear of being targeted by association.

Despite seeming to double down on his comments by saying the backlash had been an “overreaction” and he would not “relent,” Cosgrave then moved to apologize. This failed to stem the boycotts, with Meta, Google and Microsoft saying they would now not be there. Now he has resigned, but retains 81% of the business leading some to say this will still not be enough to repair the damage.

But of course, the big question here is why Cosgrave felt he had to get involved in this issue in the first place. Web Summit is due to launch an event in Qatar next year – the country invested $21m – leaving him open to allegations of bias, and infuriating an Israeli tech community who helped establish the event in the first place. You’d assume such politics would give him reason to pause before tweeting.

At the end of the day, Web Summit is about facilitating conversations between industry leaders. If its organizers are causing diplomatic incidents, it is failing in its role.

There are two key lessons for brands. Number one is to make sure you pick the right battles - a key criterion is that any issue should be directly relevant to the business. A CMO should stand for election if it wants to get into general politics. The second lesson for those who are moving into contentious areas is to ensure you have a source of good objective comms advice.

To any crisis PR professional, it would have been obvious that Cosgrave’s tweet was offensive as soon as he hit send. They would have told him to apologize much earlier.