Ethics & Lunch
The Facebook brand
Brian Groves, the director of global partnerships at Facebook, was the Center鈥檚 inaugural Lunch and Ethics speaker. Groves is a 1993 Boston College graduate who majored in history and worked at Saachi and Saachi, Pfizer, and Callaway Golf before joining Facebook in 2014. At Facebook, Groves works with traditional and established brands as they make their jump into a more digital and mobile advertising world. He said that often these companies are 鈥渄isrupted鈥� by startups with better marketing techniques, and the larger companies begin to lose market share. He leads a team that looks to serve as 鈥渢he connective tissue鈥� to keep up with new digital companies and compare markets around the globe to help these traditional companies best advertise through Facebook. Groves explained that the key is for companies to remain agile when it comes to marketing and be ready to use multiple platforms, such as Facebook, to build a brand. He answered questions about Facebook鈥檚 changing mission statement and explained that now its main goals include creating a more inclusive world, getting rid of bad actors on the service, reducing false news, creating more meaningful interactions, and improving privacy controls along with brand safety. One of the primary reasons for these changes is the divisiveness and anger that gripped the platform during and after the 2016 election. Groves also explained that Facebook has committed to moves that hurt the company financially in the short term but help them come closer to realizing their new mission. For example, it no longer lets companies target users for ads based on race or income. He reflected about Facebook鈥檚 position on free speech vs. hate speech and said that while Facebook is always looking to take down content that violates their terms of use, often posts many people dislike or find offensive are not in violation of those regulations and therefore Facebook believes in letting opinions from all sides of the political spectrum be heard.
Christopher Murphy 鈥�20, Winston Ambassador