Do you own your brands’ fb or Instagram accounts? …
Meta or Google Ads Manager account?…
And how about ad server? …
Are you sure about that??…………………………………………………………
Here’s another valuable lesson from the recent efforts of the new Polish government to depoliticize the public media that companies can transfer to their own back yards and dealings with media agencies.
The lesson is: make sure you own all your accounts!
Here’s the gist of the mess at Polish public TV station TVP that is causing so much headache to the new management. It turns out, the company is not in control of their social media profiles because they have been set up by now-former employees using their private e-mail accounts (sic!). Talking about lack of proper governance…
How do I make a parallel to your friendly neighborhood media agency? Simple: there’s loads of clients who do not own their accounts and don’t even know it.
Now, when all is well, there’s no problem, but the moment your agency relationship goes sour, this can prove very dangerous. I had clients who lost “their” accounts (well, they weren’t really theirs, were they?) and all of their data when they decided to change the agency.
It appears easier or cheaper to have your accounts created and managed by an agency, but when things get rough, even the best contract in place will not save you from trouble – some, maybe, but not all.
Think about all the data you may lose -which can also be used by the agency for the unknown purposes- and the time, effort, money and opportunity lost to bring things back to the state before the calamity.
What about the PR / Brand Safety damage that can be inflicted upon you by bad actors, if they are disgruntled and spiteful?
So, the action step is: do check ✅ if you actually own your accounts. If not, check ✅ your contract and involve your wing men from procurement. Together figure out how to take control of them before it will hurt your brands, your company and you.
There are many aspects of good media governance – that’s just one of them.