Oracle Advertising and TheKrogerCo. lead a group of global marketers, agencies, and ad tech companies by being the first to achieve their Brand Safe Workforce designation

Brand safety starts with dedicated experts, and the companies that see the most success from their efforts are those that have an enterprise commitment to brand safety education and execution. From the executive suite to the brand safety team to the teams that support brand safety outcomes in other departments—finance, compliance, procurement, product development, legal, account management, and many more—a corporate commitment to brand safety education leads to better planning, execution, and measurement.

The Brand Safety Institute’s (BSI) Brand Safe Workforce certification empowers highly specialized Brand Safety Officers (BSO) to focus on critical issues to the company such as ad fraud, negative ad adjacencies, and misinformation/hate speech. In addition to these front-line efforts, each company will designate personnel across all major business units to undergo training to become familiar with brand safety issues that may impact the company, their business partners, and consumers. Organizations that have completed the training requirements will be recognized as leaders in this space and will join the growing BSI.

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“The Kroger Co. is actively involved across the breadth of the digital-advertising ecosystem,” declares Kim Vidler, Strategic Media Partnerships Lead at The Kroger Co. “It’s imperative that our team members are up-to-date on the brand safety challenges the entire industry faces. Being a certified Brand Safe Workforce means our teams from both the internal marketing organization and agency sides understand how brand safety practices differ across roles in the marketplace, and are better able to keep our brand safety concerns front and center.”

“Building knowledge and capability across the enterprise in this way will help Brand Safe Workforce companies be better able to work cross-functionally to head off brand safety issues before they happen, identify them as they do arise, and bring the right expertise to solutions as necessary,” says Neal Thurman, co-founder of the BSI.

“With a myriad of providers in the marketplace, finding differentiation is key to any successful engagement,” says Jay Pinho, Senior Manager, Product Management for Brand Safety, Oracle Advertising. “Partnering with industry associations such as BSI and participating in programs such as the Brand Safe Workforce initiative provides both an opportunity for further education for our teams and also an opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves in the market as we continue our commitment and leadership in brand safety.”

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Brand Safe Workforce-certified organizations are among the leaders breaking new ground in the efforts to fight the harms that plague the digital advertising industry, and several other prominent companies are already taking the steps necessary to join Oracle Advertising and Kroger in having certified Brand Safe Workforces.

The impetus for the Brand Safe Workforce certification came from industry itself, explains Thurman, “Companies have come to us and asked how we can help strengthen their commitment to brand safety. The Brand Safe Workforce certification represents a commitment to depth of expertise in the form of Brand Safety Officers and a breadth of knowledge throughout the organization.