So, to paraphrase a famous Canadian, we?ve digested, ruminated and cogitated the thorny issue of formula advertising and we have amended our advertising policy as a result of the great debates that have raged on talk over the last little while (slightly before coming back from our travels as it turns out due to the very scary prospect of losing some much-valued, long term members). Thank you everyone for your contributions to the debate - it?s been truly educational.
We will not in future, as long as the ban on formula remains in place in this country, be accepting any ads for formula milk on mumsnet. This is not because we believe formula per se is wrong. We believe in mothers' right to choose what?s best for their families and there?s no doubt that in some cases formula milk is a lifesaver. Mumsnet is for all mums ? how or what they feed their kids is not relevant - but like everyone else we believe breast is best and we hope mums who wish to breastfeed get the very best support in their decision to enable them to do so.
In retrospect, though, we agree with the argument put forward by many of you that there is and will inevitably be something a bit underhand about formula milk advertising because by law these companies are not allowed directly to promote their products. We would rather mumsnet were not associated with misleading advertising and we should no doubt have realised this in advance. So apologies for being a bit dim.
In the case of the Milupa campaign in particular we are committed to running a further advertorial on our talk boards over the next couple of months. Some have questioned the legality of these ads ? obviously if they?re not legal (which we are checking - contrary to some suggestions, none of us at mumsnet hq has any legal training!) we will not run them. We will be clearly highlighting that this talk ad and the one on the home page are advertisements not editorial. (As an aside we have decided to do this with all future home page ads ? many thanks for the suggestion from members to do this.) After this campaign has finished we will not accept any advertising for formula milk.
We know some of you have been angered by the fact that we took this campaign in the first place and we wanted to explain a little bit about our motivations. It wasn?t a decision we took lightly, though as many of you have enlightened us over the last week or so, it wasn?t perhaps a great one. We went through the pragmatic arguments that lots of members have made on the site ? we didn?t think it would influence mumsnetters to formula feed as opposed to breastfeed, the ads themselves weren?t saying that formula milk is equal to or better than breastmilk, we specifically disallowed all mentions of mumsnet is sponsored by or working with, and of course the ads raised much needed revenue.
Mumsnet is run on a shoestring. To give you an idea, for those of you who haven?t downloaded our accounts , the four of us who?ve worked on it pretty much from the beginning did not earn anything at all for the first four years. This year is the first year any of us will have to pay tax and then only just! We have ploughed quite a lot in to mumsnet in terms of money, time and effort over the last five years. Yes we are a business in the sense we?re a limited company but any other business would have been shut down quite a while ago because usually you can?t get folks to work for free. Surprisingly mumsnet does take up a lot of time (what do we do you wonder...) We have a couple of part-time techs, three folks on three days a week and one pretty much full-time (not to mention weekends). Plus a lot of fab volunteers (like our competition and webguide managers, and of course our moderators) whom one day it would be nice to remunerate. We are not going to be able to do that on voluntary subscription alone; to give you some perspective subs have raised about £12k since they were introduced, that?s roughly the same as a three-month Milupa campaign. That?s not to say we aren?t enormously grateful to those who?ve voluntarily subscribed. We think it?s an amazingly generous act to contribute and get nothing extra in return ? and that community spirit and generosity has been instrumental in motivating us to keep going. That and, of course, people?s enormous generosity in terms of time and help offered on our discussion boards.
We gave up hope of luxury yachts a long time ago but we?d like one day to earn a market-related salary for our efforts so we can cover our childcare costs and keep our other halves off our backs and we?d love to be able to pay our volunteers something too. And we?d like to do all that without asking any of you to contribute subs. (Anyway enough of that ? violins back in their cases.)
The truth is we do have to accept advertising but the position we?ve arrived at from this episode is that we want mumsnet to accept ethical advertising only. (If it takes us a bit longer to keep our worse halves happy so be it ? they?re used to being kept waiting ) Thanks to everyone for helping us to arrive at this position. We will admit to floundering a little on this issue. Please be assured that any future straying from the path of righteousness will not indicate a change in policy, but merely result from gross incompetence . We know you?ll act as watchdogs in future and for that we are genuinely grateful. If you?ve any further thoughts or suggestions please do go ahead and post them here.
Many thanks,
Justine, Carrie, Rachel, JJ and Steve.