Are you gonna sponsor me or not ?! – the agitated streamer asks when the automatic bot he has set promotes the latest Burger King offer. The company spent $ 5 on something that would cost the advertising market several thousand times more.
The donation system is a permanent fixture in the world of streamers. Live players are supported by small amounts by their viewers. In return for payment, fans can enter short messages, which are then displayed on the streamer’s screen or read by an automatic bot. This mechanism was used by the western wing of the Ogilvy PR agency, implementing an extremely effective, but also extremely controversial marketing campaign.
Burger King was paying pennies for advertising worth hundreds and thousands of dollars.
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The donation system is designed for viewers, fans, critics and haters. For private individuals. In return for a small fee, streamers allow someone from outside to speak on their channel. Express your opinion, compliment the trainer or raise a few critical remarks. However, Western streamers did not foresee that the mechanism would be used by a large and serious PR agency to promote one of the most popular fast food chains in the world.
Ogilvy has selected streamers using automated bots to read comments in exchange for donations. The agency paid each of the online celebrities from $ 3 to $ 5, while informing about Burger King price promotions. The bot was reading advertising slogans live while streaming, which sparked protests from many streamers.
Trolling or unethical behavior?
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A typical internet user may find the activities of a PR agency ingenious. However, anyone who works and earns money in the media market will describe such behavior as unethical. This is because a professional company uses the gateway for fans, viewers and commentators to conduct advertising activities on a large scale. It’s like having your own website that earns money from advertising, and a washing machine manufacturer decides to conduct a marketing campaign for you… in the comments. Of course it’s free without agreeing it with you.
This type of practice is called spam for a reason. The viewer and the reader are losing out on spam, being inundated with automated marketing offers. Ogilvy showed what streaming in a black script can look like. An automated bot constantly reads information about potency pills, new cough syrup and pampers promotion in a supermarket, and the viewer is constantly bombarded with this gibberish, not only during advertising breaks.
The PR agency decided to turn everything into a joke.
Ogilvy has posted a video. With its help, the PR agency shows its practices, presenting them as a creative marketing campaign. The company is so proud of its idea that it even used Twitch-imitating visuals, screaming music and pixelated images of streamers. The same people who, most likely, unknowingly and against their will, took part in the project, “earning” from 5 to 3 dollars on it. if a PR agency wanted to cooperate with every online creator, it would have to pay him from several hundred to several thousand dollars.
Ogilvy seems very pleased with his idea, but streamers’ protests continue wider and wider circles. There is even a thread of the agency’s application to the US federal trade commission, including due to the use of unmarked ads. It seems even surprising that an international PR corporation cooperating with hundreds of influencers decided to launch such a campaign, risking a bad opinion for themselves and their client …
… what if it’s all a set-up?
Some internet users pay attention to the allegedly fictional games that appear on the screens of blocked streamers. However, there is increasing evidence against this thesis. Streamers used in the internet spot take the floor, against their will and without their awareness. One such web developer is master Mario Makera Ross O’Donovan. The second Weest streamer. They both admit that they had no idea about the campaign and that no one contacted them about it.
To ci whopp (s) er.
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