ID Comms talks to Lou Paskalis, former SVP, Customer Engagement and Media Investment at Bank of America, about the ANA’s Media Transparency report and its lasting impact.
The report sparked a conversation and ensured the company was covered for many of the issues that it highlighted, whether they had occurred or not, says Lou.
“While we didn't uncover any issues on our own, we went from a rather short contract, relatively speaking at the time with our agency to a very long one, which was rife with thou shalt nots, about various activities that may or may not have been happening at the holding company,” he says.
Lou, who was SVP, Enterprise Media Planning, Investment and Measurement Executive when the report was published, says that the information from the ANA enabled Bank of America to protect itself from some of the behaviours alleged to have been happening across the holding companies. “It just became imperative to elicit each of those items and describe our expectation in what kind of penalty we would expect if we were to find that those activities were taking place against our will,” he says.
The company worked through these issues quickly during the summer of 2016 thanks to the financial sector’s culture of risk mitigation but Lou recognizes that others might have taken longer to react. And he adds that the ANA’s work in providing frameworks, essential tools and resources, and, even in some cases, providing consultancy, like a contract template ensured that no one could avoid the issue.
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