Sneak King 2: Twitch Participation Edition
Good Idea: Using streamers to promote your products.
Bad Idea: Using streamers to promote your products.
Sure, the difference is razor thin, but it’s there, isn’t it? Or at least, that’s what Burger King found out recently.
The ad agency that represents the ‘King, Ogilvy recently tweeted out a video of their use of Twitch’s donation system as a platform for ads. In it, one of their teams (DAVID Madrid) donated the price of various, <$5 Burger King items to streamers using text-to-speech for their donations. The donation amount would be followed by what that donation could buy at Burger King: for $5, say, fries, a shake, and some chicken fries, or the items in a Whopper meal. While the video blurs the streamer’s faces and alters their voices, they’re all fairly confused by it.
About halfway through, one of the streamers really cuts to the heart of the matter, asking if Burger King plans on sponsoring him. While the video ends with clips of the streamers thanking them for the donations, the real world reaction to the video was not quite so kind. After all, most streamers make their money from actual advertisements and deals with companies, in addition to donations and subscriptions, and often have agencies to help them navigate such ad deals with specific companies. Ogilvy just tweeted out a video by which they bypassed all of that to get away with advertising on non-affiliated streams for the price of a few fast food items, and paraded that action around as a success.
And nobody really liked that.
While initial sentiment was that the video was staged, real streamers eventuallycame forward and confirmed that this sort of thing happens to them.
And while AnneMunition was not in the video, Tyler “TeePee” Polchow was:
And while he’s one of the only streamers from the video to come forward, he wasn’t the only one to confirm that it really happened:
Coincidentally, some pointed out that, aside from potentially upsetting deals streamers might already have with brands that might consider Burger King a competitor, it may well be against Twitch’s Terms of Service to use donations in this way.
Needless to say, the whole affair is viewed by the public as a massive faux pas.They didn’t bother to reach out to the largest of these streamers and sponsor them, or really any of them. They just tossed less than $5 at them, because regardless of how big a streamer you might be, that’s seemingly all you’re worth to them. Which gets really bad when you consider how much both Burger King and Ogilvy bring in each year…
Source: Kotaku
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