BIMA House Day 2 | Breakfast Session – Online Safety

09:30am-11:30am | The Human Cost of Digital Growth: Clicks vs Consequences by Online Responsibility Network

Marketers love to talk about the power of purpose-led brandbuilding. But while agencies collect awards for campaigns with authenticity, and brands post statements about wellbeing and trust, our industry continues to fund and accelerate the growth of digital platforms causing real-world harm.

This session is a challenge to the marketing community: stop pretending this is solely Big Tech’s problem. Will you take off your rosé-tinted glasses and engage in the discourse?!

We want to challenge agencies, brands, platforms and media leaders to confront the uncomfortable truth that digital success is too often measured in impressions, reach and ROAS, while human consequences are treated as someone else’s problem. Can a direct line be drawn between content and campaigns, and negative emotional outcomes?

From misinformation and platforms with inbuilt dark design patterns, to recommendation loops boosting negative sentiment, or harmful influencer culture and unsafe online environments … this commercially-led ecosystem of digital media has rewarded engagement at almost any cost. And marketers have not stood outside that system — they have fueled it!

We ask the industry to hold up a mirror to itself. Because this goes way beyond brand safety. This is about human safety. And the role our industry plays in threatening consumer wellbeing for the sake of clicks.

Speaker:

Ian Russell

Ian Russell, MBE, is Molly Russell’s father and the Chair of Molly Rose Foundation. Ian is one of the foremost tech accountability campaigners in the UK striving for an online world that is fundamentally safe for children and young people.

Having been a leading voice during the delivery of the Online Safety Act, Ian has called for the UK regulator, Ofcom, to show more ambition in its implementation of the legislation. He is also campaigning for stronger and more effective online safety laws and has urged the UK Prime Minister to commit to a new Online Safety Act that makes safety and wellbeing the price for Big Tech to pay for doing business in the UK.

Ian passionately defends the right for children to engage with technology and is an advocate for media literacy education to be embedded into UK curriculum playing an important role in suicide prevention.

Diana Erskine 

Diana is a senior operational leader who has spent over 15 years figuring out how to make complex media and digital businesses drive growth and become better, more effective, and more rewarding places to work. She is an architect behind UK Operational Excellence, focusing on building a future-fit model that balances data, automation, and AI with genuine commercial accountability.

While her day-to-day involves navigating the matrix of a global holding company, Diana’s holds a real passion in her role as a collaborative industry colleague helping to drive a common, higher standard for Brand Safety in the UK. She doesn’t believe online safety can prevail as part of a “checklist” exercise; she believes it must be baked into the operational DNA of how agencies and brands function.

As a member of the new BIMA and ORN Online Safety & Trust Council, Diana is a vocal advocate for moving beyond the rhetoric. She is committed to building the practical, rigorous systems required to tackle misinformation and win back audience trust in a skeptical age.

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