Global holding company Stagwell has found itself in hot water after research it carried out for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) leaked online.
The research, posted by Drop Site News, showed that Stagwell and MoFA were in the third stage of a research study looking at attitudes among consumers to Israel, Israelis and Palestinians through interviews with 5,600 consumers across the US, UK and Europe.
The first stage of the research saw Stagwell carry out a series of focus groups in the US, the UK, Germany and France, each further segmented by the general population, gen Z and “elites”.
In the second phase, Stagwell carried out quantitative message testing with 3,250 interviews in the US and 1,200 each in the UK, Germany, France and Spain.
In the third stage interviews, Stagwell would be testing the “specifics of messages, tone and delivery” about Israel and Palestine.
The report listed key findings from the research, listed verbatim below:
- International attitudes toward Israel and the conflict are consistently worse in Europe than in the United States, particularly in the UK, France and especially in Spain.
- Most Europeans support the “Palestinians” (except in Germany) over Israel, but they do recoil against both Hamas and Iran.
- 18-24 year-olds are uniformly the worst performing group, though attitudes in Spain are across the board negative to Israel.
- Nearly half or more of all Europeans believe that Palestinians were there first and solid majorities believe they had a nation there.
- But 8 in 10 Europeans nevertheless believe Israel has a right to exist as a nation state and the homeland of the Jewish people.
- They also see the Palestinians as having a right to a state.
- Europeans believe that the Hamas casualty numbers are accurate and that mostly civilians were killed. They agree with the language of Israel being a genocidal, apartheid country even though it contradicts their opposition to Hamas and Iran.
The research slides added that the “top messages in Europe mostly echo what worked in the US”.
These messages included that “Hamas fosters a culture of death and hate, celebrating atrocities; that the purpose of Hamas is to destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism”.
Stagwell’s research said that Europeans “also question the alliance with the left given the cultural, anti-gay position of Iran and Hamas”.
It added “two other key messages: The Jewish people need a homeland and Hamas at this point should just give up”.
A Stagwell spokesperson told B&T: “As a network, we work with a broad range of clients and partners, and each agency operates with autonomy to select and manage their own client relationships. Our agencies work across the political and issue spectrum, and this project done by a small team working on a defined brief does not reflect a shift in that approach”.
Stagwell’s network includes agencies 72andSunny, Allison+Partners and Anomaly.
Posting on LinkedIn, author and keynote speaker Zoe Scaman said:
“These agencies didn’t write Netanyahu’s propaganda manual. But every single one of them is owned by Stagwell. The same parent company. The same profits. The same leadership. The same blood money flowing through the same corporate veins.
“So now I’m talking to you…
“I know you didn’t choose this. You went to work for agencies that promised creativity, culture, purpose. You believed in the work. You believed in making something meaningful…
“The subsidiary structure doesn’t make you clean, but it also doesn’t make you trapped. You can walk away. You can refuse to let your talent, your creativity, your humanity be part of this machine.
“The money flows up. And complicity flows down. But your conscience belongs to you.”
