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It's time for a National Twitter Rally!!!
U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could hurt the advertising industry by eliminating the current tax-deductibility of advertising costs as a normal business expense for pharmaceutical companies — which could begin a slippery slope of removing the lack of service tax that our industry depends on. (see previous post for full details)
Please join our Twitter Rally to let the House and Senate know how you feel! Be POLITE, and tell them where you stand.
FLORIDA
Senator Bill Nelson - http://twitter.com/senbillnelson
Senator Mel Martinez - http://www.twitter.com/MelMartinez
Rep. Kendrick Meek - http://www.twitter.com/kendrickbmeek
NATIONWIDE
U.S. Congress Twitter Directory – http://tweetcongress.org/
EXAMPLE TWEETS
@SenBillNelson Health care reform is important, but so is my advertising job. Please fight for our rights in DC. #NoAdTax
@kendrickbmeek Please keep advertising deductible. My future depends on it. #NoAdTax
@MelMartinez Advertising fuels our economy. Please keep it deductible for Rx companies! #NoAdTax
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9 comments:
Martinez is on twitter too: @MelMartinez
Thanks for the tip, Kathryn. If anyone has any updates or questions on this, please post here and I will get back to you.
Carl Vervisch
President-Elect, Ad 2 Tampa Bay
I'll do the research myself, however more information would be helpful, as opposed to a cursory and subjective summation.
I'm all for rallying behind a worthy 'cause, but I need more than because you said so. :)
Thanks for the comment, Michael.
We're an industry lobbying organization, so generally the American Advertising Federation's interests are our best interests. In this case, our lobbyists have passed down notifications asking that we participate in this action, and we're organizing grass roots efforts to do so.
That being said, we respect your need for further research on the issue. Feel free to report any information you find. Not all of our members are legislatively inclined, which is why we employ lobbyists and appoint Legislative Chairpersons to our individual chapters.
Thanks again, and we hope you'll join our cause.
Most pharma ads are pretty bad (except 'Your Dreams Miss You' by CK) and way too long. Do those companies really need another tax haven? Do we really need more lawyers reviewing our ads?
By taxing pharma we will see an increase in Media Inventory (more spaces for sale), causing Cost-Per-Points to decrease, which allow marketers that do good advertising to increase their exposure and keep the people that do good advertising.
I completely support taxing pharma.
Thanks for the feedback, Griffin.
We'd be interested to know your reaction to the AAF's official position on the matter. (http://bit.ly/GSLkI)
They represent the broader interest of the industry, and I'd be surprised if they were opposed to a matter that would have an overall positive impact on advertising.
Please post back.
Thanks for sharing the memo Carl, it completely supports my POV.
"...the tax will make speech more expensive, the affected companies will have to reduce their advertising resulting in a reduction of advertising to consumers."
Now the networks are losing advertisers who purchased 60-90 second pods. You see that ABC, CBS, NBC are all on the letterhead. I'm not in advertising to make those networks rich, I'm in advertising to make my clients rich and to do good creative work (pharma is not good creative).
Those networks are going to have a lot more inventory to sell and they will have to reduce their prices to sell that space. This allows a majority of clients not in pharma to buy that space at a reduced cost.
The Advertising Coalition is made up of companies that make money from ad agencies. I support ad agencies, not the media corporations that make money from us.
Overall, the AAF's support does not single out individual segments of the advertising industry. Actually, both the pharmaceutical companies and the media corporations are seen as vitally important to our network.
Even so, the bigger fear of the AAF is that this sort of measure "opens the door" to more efforts to tax our industry, beyond the immediate threat to pharmaceutical advertising.
Just last November, the AAF 4th District was involved in heavy lobbying to remove Amendment 5 — a vaguely constructed proposal that was set to be placed on the ballot — which would have opened the threat of a Service Tax across the board in Florida. These sort of proposed measures are a constant threat that the AAF has ongoing systems in place to battle, and the current situation — though isolated — is one of these. As such, Ad 2 Tampa Bay will continue to support the efforts of the AAF on a grass-roots level, in this measure and others.
We respect your decision not to participate. Thank you for sharing your views.
Carl,
Thanks for sparking the discussion. It's great to talk about these things. I have a very narrow view on this and I know that AAF has to look out for the whole industry vs. the narrow few that I'm thinking about.
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