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Microsoft paying YouTubers for Xbox One mentions
- bpicolo 13y agoThat's just standard marketing. Don't know why we need the word "stealth". There are tons of youtube channels with marketing. (See every make-up vlogger ever).
- higherpurpose 13y agoExactly. Why the need for "stealth" if what they are doing is "normal"? It's because they're trying to make people believe Xbox One is more popular than it really is, and that the comments are really "natural" (when they aren't). I find it that quite unethical. It's no different than paying Reddit commenters for mentioning it.
- thisisdallas 13y ago" It's because they're trying to make people believe Xbox One is more popular than it really is" Ignoring the fact that the Xbox One has been selling great, isn't that more or less the point of marketing? Make a product seem popular, generate buzz, make money?
- lmm 13y agoIn the dim and distant past marketing was about telling people why your product was good, not convincing them it's popular.
- fleitz 13y agoYou may want to let the diamond people know about that... exactly how far in the past are we going... I'm pretty sure marketing has always been about moving product for the lowest cost possible.
- bpicolo 13y agoThe whole point is kinda for people to review Xbox one things, i.e. tell them about things that are good. It's not about trying to convince people it's popular.
- gtirloni 13y agoAnd then they realized how herd mentality works and how it's much more profitable and efficient then actually making people think. In this, marketing is the ultimate exploiter of our flaws...
- blumkvist 13y agoIt seems like you don't know much about marketing, so best refrain to make such statements.
- BugBrother 13y agoYou really see no problem with astroturfing? (Or is that your job? :-) ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing Edit: I am a bit shocked to see so many people (well, accounts) arguing astroturfing is OK, it used to be despised and big news when Microsoft did it then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Incidents I will assume that is more astroturfing. Otherwise, goodbye Internet as an information source....
- fleitz 13y agoPerhaps the poster is capable of evaluating products on their own, or paying for independent reviews. If you're dumb enough to believe 'free' advice you pretty much deserve what you get. Remember when the service is free, the product is you. Our entire society is astroturfed whats possibly more sad is that people can get genuinely caught up in these campaigns and start spreading them for free.
- thisisdallas 13y agoI did not say I do not have a problem with the marketing agreement Microsoft has set up. Be that as it may, I also understand this type of marketing is not solely taken advantage of by Microsoft. I don't anyone is arguing it's ok. People are pointing out that Microsoft is by no means the first company to take advantage of this type of marketing.
- bpicolo 13y agoThey're not saying you have to lie about the Xbox, they're just saying to feature it. Nothing unethical about it.
- lmm 13y agoMaybe you don't have to explicitly lie, but "video creators "may not say anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One, or any of its Games"
- gtirloni 13y agoI'm just thinking here in practical terms. If these bloggers/youtubers were in fact companies/portals, everybody would be fine with it. In this regard, I don't see how Microsoft can be blamed for playing the same game the whole marketing industry plays. No, looking from the "what I expect" perspective, most people expect these bloggers/youtubers to reflect the "opinion of the crowds" and to reflect reality more accurate I guess. In this light, Microsoft's attempt to pay them could be seen as unethical. Personally I never trusted of these bloggers/youtubers so I'm far from shocked with this news. I expect them to be doing that by the very nature of their "jobs", if not for direct profit from vendors, then for ad-click revenue. I'd say don't be naive with anything, specially things involving products and revenue.
- philfrasty 13y agoThe submission headline should be: „Marketing: Microsoft paying YouTubers for Xbox One mentions“. Nothing special here...
- kordless 13y agoThe effects crypto currencies have on this particular type of marketing approach will be interesting, at the very least.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago"Free market will fix this."
- fleitz 13y agoIncorrect, advocates of the free market don't even think there's anything wrong with this, including myself. This is on the level of finding out Santa Clause isn't real and politicians are generally liars.
- interstitial 13y agoCrypto currencies are a standing bribe for all journalists and posters to HN, Reddit where the rubes hang.
- josteink 13y agoUnlike Apple and its team of "insiders" and their "leaks", which coincidentally seems to always be people who get free goods from Apple's marketing department. This is a complete sham!
- CitationNeeded 13y agoDo you have an example of that happening where the "free goods" were not a temporary review unit which was later returned?
- valarauca1 13y agoA former senior marketing official at apple talks about it. http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_controlled_leaks http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_contro...
- ciniglio 13y agoThis doesn't mention anything about giving hardware to anyone. All this talks about is how Apple plans leaks of information...
- 300bps 13y agoOh great, a reddit-style novelty account created 42 minutes ago.
- thisisdallas 13y agoI know the gaming world is making a big mess about this but as others have mentioned, it's nothing other than marketing. Doing promotions like this for Machinima partners/affiliates is nothing new. I also don't see how it differs from publishers sending free games to people to review on YouTube.
- gu 13y agoMaybe read the linked article to get some food for thought: "These kinds of payments aren't inherently suspect in and of themselves. If the video makers disclosed that Microsoft was paying extra for these videos, and if they were allowed to say whatever they wanted in those videos, then the whole thing could be seen as merely an unorthodox way to increase exposure for the Xbox One on YouTube. That's not the case, however. According to a leaked copy of the full legal agreement behind the promotion, video creators "may not say anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One, or any of its Games" and must keep the details of the promotional agreement confidential in order to qualify for payment. In other words, to get the money, video makers have to speak positively (or at least neutrally) about the Xbox One, and they can't say they're being paid to do so."
- bpicolo 13y agoThat's not uncommon with marketing agreements at all.
- BugBrother 13y agoYou see no problem with a secret marketing agreement? (A bunch of years ago, astroturfing used to be shocking news.)
- Ogre 13y agoMaybe it's not uncommon, but it is against FTC guidelines. (I claim that because it's in the article too) I don't know if being "against FTC guidelines" is equivalent to "illegal" or not. But let's hope so.
- thisisdallas 13y ago
- fleitz 13y agoThis is what happens when you cut the PR middlemen out of the equation. OMG the horror MS is directly paying average joes instead of paying PR people.
- corin_ 13y agoI run some product placement / brand awareness stuff with big YouTube gamers (also for gaming hardware, but not Microsoft), and I discussed this directly with ASA (Advertising Standards Authority in the UK) to ensure we weren't doing anything wrong. We don't instruct our influences that they cannot be negative about our product not instruct them to be positive. We agree how often the products need to be shown, and include a few other things (link to product in description, etc.) ASA's guidance was that for this we do not need to disclose anything about paying these influencers. I pointed out that although we don't specifically give them these instructions, the reality is that if one of them was negative we would kill the deal, and therefore were we essentially breaking the rules and just not putting it in writing - they said that no, we were fine until the first time we kill a deal because they said something negative. At that point on we have set a precedent and will need to have all our influencers disclose that they are being paid by us for these videos. But not until then. Worth noting that our videos are fairly obvious - we generally have a 5 second logo clip that they play, the link in the description goes through what is obviously an adserver (though sometimes via bit.ly) - so we aren't trying hard to hide the fact. Although this was not relevant to ASA's answer to us. Edit: Worth noting I work in Europe only, nothing in the US. Have also checked in Germany/France where we do the same thing, and there they don't seem to care right now, so no issues.
- zackbigdog 13y agoYup - we encountered the same stuff (great explanation) -- here is an example of something we did for a major brand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGAfHi5wF1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGAfHi5wF1o
- corin_ 13y agoLooking forward to seeing the film come out, and nice job working with Razer on it :)
- zackbigdog 13y agothanks dude! would love to learn more about your company. maybe there are synergies worth exploring? hit me up on twitter @fireoneout and we can exchange info
- cheald 13y agoKinda related, I've been mind-boggled at the amount of product placement Microsoft has been buying in TV shows lately. Everywhere you turn, characters are making a VERY OBVIOUS POINT of using a Surface or something. It's hilarious/awful.
- schenecstasy 13y ago"Let's Bing it"
- brudgers 13y agoIt's so noticeable only because viewers are conditioned to seeing Apple's products placed prominently.
- cheald 13y agoNot at all. It's noticeable because it's awkward. Shots will linger on the Bing search page, or on the Metro Start Menu for a couple of seconds before the character does something, and then the character taps an app and gets into what they're doing. If it wasn't product placement, it would be bad direction. I've been watching Arrow lately and it's really obnoxious there (though not really any more so than other shows that Microsoft has their marketing hooks into). For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyRZ03SFB68 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyRZ03SFB68 This is consistent. Every time a character uses a computer, there are several solid seconds of LET US SHOW YOU THE NEW WINDOWS.
- smackfu 13y agoYeah, Apple is clever to have their logo on the back, lit up. So when they pay for product placement, the laptop is just sitting on the desk, with the actor using it and facing the camera, with the logo nicely framed on screen.
- jonhohle 13y agoI've read in the past that Apple does very little product placement (that may have changed) and that the primary reason that Apples are so predominant is that is what they have available on set. This may be more true for photo shoots than TV/Movie production.
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoThis is pretty standard marketing stuff in 2014... If I were running the Xbox marketing department I'd start firing people if they WEREN'T doing this. There are entire startups whose job it is to set up advertisers and YouTubers with this type of arrangement - look no further than FullScreen, BigFrame, et al...
- noodle 13y agoI'd say two things: One is that you're correct, it has been happening for years within the industry, so it's kind of weird to see an article almost in the style of an "expose" on the practice. Two is that it really isn't getting huge market traction. Or it wasn't at the time when I was working more closely with it. It was considered more like a value-add or diversification strategy alongside other media buys and not a primary strategy.
- pstack 13y agoDon't we all just assume this is going on? Also, if it's alright to pay major gaming sites and magazines and personalities to talk about your product, why not some knucklehead with a bunch of youtube followers? It's no less sleazy. The great thing about modern society is that most consumers have evolved enough savvy to be suspect of almost all brand-encounters. Even to the point of alerting to a lot of sure false-positives.
- cdash 13y agoIt is quite amazing that so many people on here are very ok with astroturfing.
- belgianguy 13y agoWell if you want to go down that rabbit hole, if MS is willing to do unethical advertising for its gaming console, how much of an extra effort would it be for them to pay people to defend its dubious practices on the internet? It's not the first time this has come up, and I bet they've done similar things for their other software in the past. As you could read in the article, they know how to cover their butts quite well, as such it's immensely hard to prove, but iirc, Mark Penn used to run a company called Burston-Marsteller that went quite far in the Microsoft evangelism (shilling). Some notable examples: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/?comments=1&post=26068393 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-micr... It's downright disgusting and misleading. Market your stuff until the cows come home, but don't try to act as if it's organic interest while it's actually a paid product placement, which is exactly what's happening here. That's intentional misdirection, bribery wrapped in an NDA. I hope the FTC takes interest in such blatant disregard of ethics in marketing. Microsoft may be big, but it has to play by the rules too. And no, it's not okay because some other firm does it. I don't get how Microsoft tries to play the angel of ethics when throwing mud at other companies, but doesn't really respect its (potential) customers when it comes to their own PR.
- mikelat 13y agoNobody is "okay" with it but everyone is influenced by it and there's nothing you can do. If there's a company with a large marketing budget then you can bet a good portion of that budget goes towards making themselves look good and their competition bad, because that's what everybody is doing. The best thing you can do is not play their game.
- undoware 13y agoHow did the rapgenius pitch to 'affiliates' go? "That shit will BLOW UP!!!" Here's hoping they're right. Again.
- trekky1700 13y agoIn related news, comapnies pay for ads on TV and Brad Pitt was paid to drink Pepsi in WWZ. World shocked.
- erbo 13y agoI have long assumed that, whenever someone posts any good mention of any Microsoft product or service, the standard response should be, "How much did Microsoft pay you to say that?"
- Jehar 13y agoThere's one key point that I haven't seen discussed here much. If this were a simple case of Microsoft contacting content producers directly and offering these things, then it'd be more acceptable. However, these are partners of Machinima, which has a relationship with YT and advertisers (fox, adotube, cbs, etc) to provide a revenue share to content producers. The fact that Machinima is mandating these terms to the content producers is what makes everything a bit shady, and poses several conflicts of interest for them.
- fishbacon 13y agoI feel like a Machinema channel could simply make a review of the Microsoft Squared Square and the Sony Fun-VCR, and still be within the boundaries of the contract right? Comparing the good points of the two Glossy Blu-Ray Players would make a good comparison of the two I believe.