Monica Lewinsky asks the Ad World to take a stand on Public Shaming

If you were a brand, what brand would you be?"
Monica Lewinsky asked during her talk at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity on Thursday, noting that she was a brand in major crisis back in the late '90s -- one from which she almost didn't bounce back.
She won a standing ovation from the creative elite at Cannes Lions after telling them in emotional speech to join her mission to ensure “public shaming as a blood sport must stop.”
Lewinsky appeared at the festival Thursday to deliver the Ogilvy & Inspire keynote speech.
She told the crowd, “Like me, at 22, a few of you may also have taken wrong turns and fallen in love with the wrong person, maybe even your boss … Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn’t the president of the United States of America.
“Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply. In 1998 after having been swept up into an improbable romance,  I was then swept up into a political, legal and media maelstrom, that we had never seen before.
Ms. Lewinsky said that her affair in 1998 with then-president Bill Clinton sealed her fate as "patient zero," the first person to be publicly shamed and ostracized online on a massive, global scale. This scandal, she said, was "brought to you by the digital revolution."
In a speech that echoed much of her recent TED talk, Lewinsky, 41, went on to describe how “I was branded as a tart, slut, whore, bimbo, floozy and of course ‘that woman,’ I was seen by many but truly known by few … It was hard to remember ‘that woman’ had a soul and was once unbroken.
“In 1998 I lost my reputation and my dignity, I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life.”

“There were moments for me when it seemed like suicide was the only way to end the ridicule … because of the headlines, my parents knew what I was going through, there was no mistaking it and no escaping it,” she said, “Today, too many parents have learned of their child’s suffering after it is too late.”
Much of her talk was dedicated to calling for the end of cyberbullying and publicly shaming people, but she also talked about how scandals and public shame have launched an industry, and how the ad world plays a role.

"How is the money made?" she asked. "Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars. And the more advertising dollars... the more of what sells: shame."

Ms. Lewinsky was quick to add, "This is not an indictment of advertising dollars. I'm sure we can all agree that there's nothing wrong with advertising dollars... But I believe we can also agree there are boundaries where profit halts and social responsibility steps in."

We're in a dangerous cycle, she said. "The more we click on this kind of gossip, the more numb we get to the human life behind it. And the more numb we get, the more we click. All the while, someone is making money off of the back of another suffering." We are all co-creating the content collectively by our clicking behavior, she said -- we are all the editors of new media.
Ms. Lewinsky brought advertising into play, saying brands can play a role in creating a more compassionate world, one that rejects shaming. "Building a more compassionate society is going to be a bilateral exercise between individuals and the brands that represent their aspirations, their values and their truths. People make brands. If people are compassionate, brands will be compassionate in return."
"We can change our behavior….we can together make a society where the sometimes distancing effect of technology doesn't remove our fundamental humanity."

She concluded, “We can lead each other to a more compassionate, more empowered place, we can help change our behavior, we can all learn from mistakes … and we can together make a society where the sometimes distancing of technology does not remove our humanity.
“You are the creative engines that will drive forward our culture. Will you help me?”