ANZ has pulled all its advertising from News Limited properties including print, online and pay TV provider Foxtel, in retaliation to a front page story printed by The Daily Telegraph and other News Limited titles yesterday.
The articles erroneously claimed that ANZ operates call centres in India to service Australian customers, when in fact the accompanying picture of the so-called call centre on the front page of the Telegraph was a technology centre.
The article was published despite written advice to the Telegraph on Monday October 2 that ANZ did not have call centres in India.
While ANZ head of corporate communications Paul Edwards said it is happy with the corrections made today by The Courier Mail, the Herald Sun, the Telegraph’s effort was “inadequate” and “churlish”.
“We’re corresponding with the Telegraph via our lawyers and we hope there’s some sort of sensible commercial resolution. At the end of the day it’s not in any of our interests and we would hope to resolve it in the coming days,” Edwards said.
But one senior advertising executive slammed the decision by ANZ as punitive.
"ANZ's decision to pull advertising from News properties in response to their article about outsourced call centres is small minded. The News editors have every right to explore an issue that is important to their constituents and ANZ would be better advised to confront the issue on its merits instead of adopting this punitive, back-door approach."
Ken Miller, marketing professor at UTS, said by pulling its ads from News Ltd properties the bank might be missing out on the rich media opportunities available through its newspapers, magazines and television stations.
“This could be an issue for marketing and sales effectiveness,” he said.
