LEGO HAS STOPPED advertising with the Daily Mail newspaper indefinitely, following a concerted social media campaign geared towards tackling “divisive hate campaigns” in major UK newspapers.
The Stop Funding Hate campaign attempts to target advertisers in certain UK newspapers, agitating for them to withdraw their business.
Following a number of tweets and posts to Danish toy company Lego, the organisation has stated that it will no longer advertise with the Daily Mail.
The company tweeted this morning that it had finished an advertising agreement with the Daily Mail and it had no further plans to advertise with the paper.
The issue was highlighted by an open post by Bob Jones to Lego on 4 November and carried on Facebook.
Jones’ post was shared close to 13,000 times.
In it, he states that he his a fan of Lego and buys the product regularly for his son.
However, Jones takes issue with a free promotional giveaway of Lego with the Daily Mail newspaper.
“It genuinely bothers me, that a great progressive company like yours supports this ‘news’ paper, helping increase its circulation,” the post reads.
Jones takes issue with recent coverage by the Daily Mail on a number of stories, including immigration and its response to a decision by High Court judges in relation to Brexit.
He states that Lego should not support the newspaper.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie questioning whether Lego had severed its adversitising ties with the Daily Mail as a result of the campaign, a spokesperson said this:
The main purpose for us as a company is to develop amazing, creative LEGO® play experiences to children all over the world. In order to do that successfully, we spend a lot of time listening to what children have to say. And when parents and grandparents take the time to let us know how they feel, we always listen just as carefully.
We are both humbled and honoured to see how much consumers all over the world express their care for our company and our brand. And we will continuously do our very best to live up to the trust and faith that people all around the world show us every day.
The agreement with The Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future.
The Stop Funding Hate campaign has targeted other companies to withdraw advertising from different publications.
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