The all-consuming binfire on LinkedIn this week…
The all-consuming binfire on LinkedIn this week lit by Zoe Scaman centres on Stagwell’s work to help the Israeli government launder its image, sorry win the Hammas war. Well, of course. There’s always someone willing to spray Chanel on a corpse if the cheque is big enough. The oldest alibi in the comms trade is back in circulation: “if we don’t do it, someone else will.”
But this isn’t the 1980s. Lord (Tim) Bell once declared, “I’m not a priest.” His morality was transactional: take the money, don’t ask questions, sleep soundly. It worked in an era when scrutiny was optional. But that age is over. Today, every grubby brief is dissected in the open.
Dan Gretton, in I You We Them, his unprecedented study of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, writes about the “desk killer”: the bureaucrat who never pulls the trigger but oils the machinery of destruction. That’s what this is moral outsourcing. The PowerPoint mercenary who insists it’s just a strategy, not complicity. The bullet points are clean, even if the hands aren’t.
You can’t be the next WPP and still pretend to be squeaky clean. Stagwell has ambition written in tablets of stone. And here’s the rub: sadly, any stain doesn’t stop at Stagwell HQ. It affects all the companies in the group. I feel sorry for them; some I know, as many have impeccable values. But every agency under Mark Penn’s umbrella now carries the smell. Take his dollar, inherit his stain.
Stagwell HQ response to the noise? Predictable language, thought up by the same team, under scrutiny, Corporate nothing soup ladled out to the trades with a straight face a masterclass in empty words, designed to bore you into forgetting. It’s not crisis management, it’s crisis chloroform: stall, smother, and pray the mob moves on. Meanwhile, the doorbell rings fresh “interesting clients” eager for the same dry-cleaning service.
Years ago, when a nameless conglomerate tried to buy me, their negotiator made it clear I’d be “owned” and my head mounted on the wall. Macho nonsense, yes, but also truth. Independence and values can’t be franchised. Culture is always the casualty.
I don’t wear Bell’s collar. I’m not a priest. I have my own morality, flawed, frail at times, human, but mine. And I’ll say this plainly: if you’re an agency employee appalled by this decision, the way out is the door. Stop pretending you can “values-wash” from within.
Because in the age of transparency, there are no shadows. You cannot launder a client’s reputation while your own clothes reek of smoke. The irony is total: in scrubbing someone else’s sins, Stagwell has branded its own name indelibly but will it matter to the business in 6 months’ time ask Mark Moody-Stuart
Desk killers in designer suits may whisper that it’s just business. History will record it as complicity.