Multiple outlets are adding Swedish car company Volvo to the list of brands who are pulling their commercials from the No. 1 program on cable news, Hannity.
Volvo is reportedly joining coffee company Keurig, Realtor.com, DNA-testing service 23andMe, plus-size clothing brand Eloquii, and vitamin company Nature’s Bounty, who announced their decisions to pull their ads over the weekend, not long after the popular Fox News host started covering sexual harassment allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
On Thursday, The Washington Post published a story on Moore, alleging he initiated romantic relationships with girls in between the ages of 14 and 18 when he was in his thirties. The story cited 30 sources and multiple women on the record.
Sean Hannity told viewers of his TV show and his radio show listeners not to rush to judgment about the allegations. “Every single person in this country deserves the presumption of innocence,” he said that night on Hannity. The following day, he interviewed the embattled candidate on his radio show, who denied the allegations.
We’ve received inquiries RE: advertising on Hannity. We are not running TV advertising on Hannity. We continue to closely evaluate where we advertise.
— 23andMe (@23andMe) November 10, 2017
Hi there! Hannity is blocked from our advertising list. If we can help with anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at social@eloquii.com.
— ELOQUII (@ELOQUII) November 10, 2017
Volvo USA posted the above tweet yesterday, but has since taken it down. It is unknown if this was done because Volvo has reversed its decision, or if it just prefers not to publicize this particular decision via social media.
Hopefully no Volvo-owning Hannity fans will decide to destroy their Volvos.
In addition to Volvo, HelloFresh, Hubble Contacts, Reddi-Wip, UNTUCKit, and the Society For Human Resource Management announced that they are pulling their commercials from the program yesterday.
Now, none of the companies that pulled ads directly cited Hannity’s coverage, and most of the statements were made in Twitter threads responding to complaints about their respective advertising relationships with the host, including Hebrew National, which is owned by Conagra Foods.
Here’s a tweet from Hebrew National, posted yesterday:
Hi Ali –
We removed Hannity from our advertising plans. We will be sure to provide your feedback with our team. Our advertising is not intended to be an endorsement of or sponsorship of any particular program. Thank you.— Hebrew National (@HebrewNational) November 13, 2017
A Conagra Foods spokesperson clarified this morning that the company pulled its ads from the show months ago, not in light of Hannity’s current coverage.
“We adjusted our media spend several months ago due to the needs of our business,” spokesperson Lanie Friedman told Business Insider. “That said, we have not run on this program since August, so our decision was not made currently and has nothing to do with this controversy.”
Keurig has garnered the most extreme response from Hannity’s fans, some of whom have taken to social media to share videos of them smashing their Keurig machines in protest of the brand’s decision to exit from the program.
Keurig’s CEO Bob Gamgort later apologized to employees, saying that the decision to explain plans to halt advertising was “outside of company protocols.”
“This gave the appearance of ‘taking sides’ in an emotionally charged debate that escalated on Twitter and beyond over the weekend, which was not our intent,” Gamgort wrote in an internal memo to staff obtained by WaPo.
But Gamgort never explicitly said the company would put their spots back on the program.