Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Why Doesn't Traditional Media Follow the Same Rules as Influencers?

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

After a quick, but timely update about Android OS dessert names, Marques and Andrew dive head-first into the weeds surrounding influencer-disclosure for brand promotions. They compare some of their personal experiences to the extremely relaxed rules that television, movies, and traditional media have enjoyed over the years. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Tom Scott Video: https://bit.ly/3udLBU4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality. And they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. Thank you. tripled for three times the impact. Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And today's episode, we had a topic,

and then we dove way into the weeds about it and didn't come back out for like an hour. So if you're cool with that, definitely stick around. The weeds are all about like disclosure and examples of proper advertising methods and traditional media versus influencer marketing and where all these different lines in the sand are. It's a really all-off-the-wall conversation in a bunch of different areas, but I think it's worth listening to. So we'll get into all that in a second, but first a little update from one of the stories from last week about Android. Remember we saw those leaked screenshots? Yeah, Android 12. And I think one thing we were talking about was we missed dessert naming and that's what this rumor is about. That's why it's here. That's why it's back. That's why it's back. Yeah. So not that

it seems like Android 12 still just going to be called Android 12, but there's some behind the scenes rumors that internally it's called Snowcone. And what I didn't realize is Android 11 internally was called Red Velvet Cake. So it seems like they are keeping the dessert name thing kind of going, just not publicly anymore. So I guess just to sort of zoom out for a second for those who might be wondering what we're talking about, Android. For a very long time, every new version has been named after a dessert food in alphabetical order.

So I forget what A and B were, but then it was cupcake, donut, eclair, fro-yo. Oh, now I'm off the top of my head. Gingerbread. I was going to ask if you could do it. Honeycomb, ice cream sandwich, jelly bean, Kit Kat. What's the L? I'm could do it. Honeycomb, ice cream sandwich, jelly bean, Kit Kat. What's the L? I'm Googling it. I'm cheating.

Android lollipop. Lollipop. Oh, yeah. That should have been pretty easy, I think. Then marshmallow. Then what was the chocolate one? Nougat. Nougat, yeah.

Oreo. And then Android P. Android pie, they called it? Pie, yeah. We really were gunning for peppermint. Yeah. We like, we painted an Android figurine and Hiroshi like retweeted it.

Also, we also, I think the reason I'm so into this is because one of the first events when I started here was Google I.O. the year Oreo came out. And we went and all the snacks in the entire place were just Oreos. And we decided to go out and we went and all the snacks in the entire place were just Oreos. And we decided to go out and buy Oreos and slowly put them in different shots from the event throughout the entire week. And we like it just felt like Hiroshi was just trolling everybody through our videos. Yeah, it was it was really fun.

And then at Q, they kind of gave up. Yeah. So every year there is always this little sort of speculation of what dessert are they going to name it after? What is the dessert that starts with this new letter? And we finally got to Q and they just stopped and just said, it's just Android. It's just Android. Like we're not going to try to name this after somewhere.

It's not quiche. Like there is no Q dessert food. So I guess it just kind of stopped there. But now we've heard that internally they've continued naming it with R, Red Velvet, and now with s snow cone i don't think they're going to actually make this a public name i don't think they bring it back but it's just kind of funny they're still doing it the question kind of is is like are they going to make any like easter eggs about it because last year there was like an ar pop-up in the google cam where it showed you a red velvet cake recipe and it taught you how to make

like an android looking cake that was red velvet um now in terms of snow cone like probably the only thing you're really going to see is some file names that start with the that are prefaced with sc um sure but I just want I want a snow cone alien figurine because that would look awesome with the top just like snow cone colors on its head. I think they could make it.

I think if not we need somebody to make it for us. We'll find a way but I think they'll probably make like a little Easter egg in the settings like they

always do and that'll be it but there you go. That's a little update Android 12 snow cone. What do you think the what is the T if we go back to dessert names

tiramisu. Is that the obvious answer? If it's not tiramisu is like the best dessert ever so if it's not I'll just be really upset. I feel like theyamisu, is that the obvious answer? If it's not, tiramisu is like the best dessert ever. So if it's not, I'll just be really upset. I feel like they always go with the second most obvious answer. So I'm going toffee.

Toffee like matches up with nougat and everything, but I think that's boring. And I'll never buy another Google product again if it's toffee. Whoa. All right. Hot take. I'm passionate about tiramisu. So we had a video this week that had a whole bunch of things sort of tossed into it in one. And it was a fun video to make.

It was a little off the beaten path, I guess, of tech videos. I have a funny story on this happening. You made this video over the weekend and we're testing out some new task managers since the team's growing. Yeah. I just saw in my task manager Dogecoin to explain video and started getting checked off. So I just assumed you were testing all the different tasks, the task things and what it could do and putting in like fake examples. And then you tell me to read the script on like Monday. And I was like, oh, I should have been paying attention to all

of these. I thought he was really committed to this example. I was like, that's a great example. Everyone's talking about Dogecoin, but not really quite up our sleeve. But I think you did a good job in the video just kind of explaining the hype around it. Yeah. So there's been a lot of random hype around Dogecoin and just in the crypto world and in the personal finance world, there's been a lot of talk about all kinds of topics lately. We've probably seen everyone's reactions to what happens on Wall Street and everyone's reactions to game stock and stock prices going up and down for companies and then stock manipulation and then all these sorts of crypto arguments. Bitcoin has been talked about for years. So Dogecoin had like this sort of moment and now suddenly Elon's sort of taken it under his wing and made it much more than just a

moment. But it felt like enough to like just talk about all of it. Dogecoin happened to be the title, but it was a whole bunch of crypto talk and sort of talking about why there's some hype behind it. We kind of want to unpack some of the mini stories inside of that video. Yeah, there's a story in that video. If you haven't got a chance, we'll link it in the show notes. But we had an email sent to us. And this is kind of what the majority of people seem to be talking about based on at least like every time we release a video, I go

deep into the comments to try and find where it's been talking about on Reddit, on Twitter, articles, if anything gets posted. And despite this video being about Dogecoin, the main story was about an email we received talking about Tron, Tron Coin. I think it's just called Tron, the TRX. Essentially, somebody reached out asking us to do a sponsored tweet because, and they'd already worked with people like Lindsay Lohan, Neo, Lil Yachty, Amanda Kearney, and wanted to do a sponsored tweet. So when we asked a little closer, they said you had to make a tweet

about Tron and that quote, we need not make it look like a sponsored tweet. And that just kind of the biggest red flag. Yeah, that is literally the biggest red flag you could ask for. So first of all, I don't do that many sponsored tweets, right? I don't actually do that many sponsored things in general outside of like your pretty standard podcast ad reads that you guys are probably used to by now. But when we get an email that says, hey, we have this campaign, we have this cool thing. I always like to hear them out. Yeah. Like anytime there's something potentially interesting, you sometimes find nuggets, you

find diamonds in the rough that haven't been done before because everyone sort of knows the typical like audible ad, for example. So we try to mix it up and just hear everybody out. So when they reach out saying we've done this campaign with this really weird mix of names, like Lil Yachty is a rapper. Amanda Cerny is a Viner turned YouTuber. So sort of closer to my world, Lindsay Lohan, nowhere near my world. I'm like, what could possibly, what product, what thing could possibly involve all of these worlds? I'm trying to think logically. So I'm like, what could possibly, what product, what thing could possibly involve all of these worlds? I'm trying to think logically. So I'm like, all right, I'll hear them out.

Tell us about it, basically. And I think you replied saying, all right, well, we'll hear you out. What do you have in mind? So it comes back as, all right, it's this cryptocurrency. It's called Tron. I'd never heard about it before this. And they even linked three example tweets from three people from that previous email, which I clicked on and saw, of course, tweets about this cryptocurrency, not marked as ad,

not marked as sponsored. Amanda Cerny, to be fair, wasn't linked in these tweets, but she had appropriately disclosed her tweet as sponsored. Yeah, she did a hashtag ad. The other ones absolutely were not. And so I just, I don't think we ever replied, sort of just buried this email. I think I just said no. Yeah. So we end up going back to this Dogecoin thing and I'm making this video talking all about

why Dogecoin has had this moment. And really in this world of like, sort of turning Wall Street on its head and not taking a lot of this stuff too seriously, Dogecoin succeeded because it lot of the stuff too seriously uh dogecoin succeeded because it didn't take itself too seriously like the people who created it have us obviously had some involvement but they've they've made some pretty great donations and they don't seem to be paying people to tweet in order to drive interest in a crypto right

so this sort of felt like the opposite version of that. This was like, you're paying people to drive interest and hopefully sort of get people talking about and thinking about trading your crypto. But when it's Lil Yachty, Amanda Cerny, Lindsay Lohan, I don't see, it just seems way, way all over the map, like a little too try hard. And that's why I even brought it up in the first place. Yeah. And it's like clearly targeted at people who are not generally known for crypto, because like obviously people who are doing full on social media influencer stuff where they're based in crypto, like that would kill any trust. So they're trying to find people who are outside of this crypto world.

And when you look at it, Tron seems to not have the best reputation over the last few years. So it's kind of perfect for them. They need to branch out towards people who aren't as knowledgeable in terms of crypto. And like you said, everybody right now is trying to make some sort of investment, although it feels less and less like investments lately and more and more like gambling. Yeah. When you say like they have to go to people who are not in crypto, it felt like they have to do that. Yeah. Because if you go to people, that would be like I'm trying to draw an analogy in my head. That would be like Samsung

going to a bunch of people who never talk about tech, like Robert Downey Jr. to make an ad or talk about the product. It's going to hit a lot of ears that have never heard about this thing before. And that would take this as their first introduction to it rather than going to crypto accounts, going to related accounts where people have heard about all these different things and are much more already weighing the pros and cons and will have a little bit more of a critical eye. So I think they had to go this way of just like random people they can pay who will introduce new audiences to it.

Exactly. Yeah. We are not financial advisors. I own zero crypto, by the way. Oh yeah, I wanted to disclose. I wanted to disclose I don't own any Dogecoin. There are so many conspiracies. I mean, anytime you tweet a little Doge picture,

everyone goes crazy on Twitter. I don't own any Dogecoin. I do own Bitcoin and I have for a long time and I have almost no interest in trying to pump Bitcoin for my own video. Don't think that that's what's happening, but that's my disclosure. Yeah, but I think more of our gripe here is that like, we are so focused on everything

we do and disclosing and being open and honest with everybody and making sure we're following all the guidelines yet. It really feels like this is, I mean, we've talked about it before. I think you've brought up like a shack Instagram post before that didn't have any disclosure. But this just felt like we saw all aspects of three very clearly not regulated tweets that were paid for that had zero disclosure. And all of that just felt kind of like not unfair, just like a different set of rules that we've always kind of wanted to know more about, but I've never seen the behind the scenes of it. Do you remember the Mr. Mobile episode of Waveform where we talked all about like, you know, standard practices in the tech world, in the like media world about how things typically work? I think there's a pretty well understood set of typical lines in the sand that you draw

when you're in this position. And I felt like this was, well, pretty clearly on the other side of that land in the sand. I wanted to give the founder of Tron like some way to defend himself. He's obviously not here on the podcast and he may or may not be personally responsible for this, but he tweeted at me after that video. And so he mentioned, he says, hi Marquez. I'm just going to read his tweets. Hi Marques. I am Justin Sun, the founder of Tron. Sorry, this was not authorized by Tron Foundation. We will work with our community and see if we can find out any information about this incident.

Then he said, I really like your programs and have been a follower of your channel on Twitter. Would you be interested in learning more about Tron? I will be happy to share more with you and give you a demo of Tron. It is faster and cheaper than all of its competitors. And then finished with, the Tron Foundation believes that transparency is key. If any celebrities are paid to endorse Tron, we require them to disclose. We believe that all influencers who are shaping public opinions about public blockchain networks should publicly disclose if they are being paid. So that's his Twitter response, to which I would say, So that's his that's his twitter response To which I would say I understand

What he's saying but this first of all if you read the I literally screenshotted the email so you can read them Didn't come directly from tron and I think that's pretty key. It came from someone claiming to be A tron partner. So this is not an email from justin I blocked out who it was from but it didn't come from Tron. That's number one. And to be fair there, it wasn't just like, there's a lot of people saying this could be potentially someone trying to ruin Tron or someone who has a bunch of Tron stock that is trying to pump and dump by pretending like paying people to do all this, but they're not associated with Tron. But I did my research. I used the name. I used the company that reached out to us. There are plenty of articles that say they are partnered with Tron. Yeah, this is a Tron partner.

This is definitely, we did our research. This isn't just some random person. This is somebody with authority in the crypto world. So this is a Tron partner, not Tron. So when Justin says Tron always requires people to disclose, you can say that, but that doesn't address that Tron partners. Second of all, all of these tweets were replied to immediately by Justin. With almost the exact same response yeah with just like hey thanks for like tweeting about tron like i'll give you some tron coin whatever it's called so it's pretty clear that uh he was happy to it's it's almost

impossible to read these tweets and think that they were just genuine organic tweets you kind of have to know yeah so those are the two things i would bring up i don't know if he actually wants to you know defend himself further i'm kind of not really interested. I feel like we've sort of bled the story out. We understand all the details of it. Tron hasn't had the best reputation and that's about all I'm probably going to talk about Tron. I think we, uh, we, we've talked about Dogecoin for a while and that was the, that was the

fun part of the story. So I enjoyed making a video that wasn't as cookie cutter tech, and I think we will be making some more of those in the future. But I think that brings us to the meat of this topic, though, that we wanted to talk about. I mentioned the Mr. Mobile episode and just like general common practices for declaring when something is an ad. And on this topic, there was a great Tom Scott video this week, and it was almost perfect timing. It was the day the Dogecoin episode came out. Same day. And he made a half hour video, basically just deep diving into this topic, kind of the way he does, where he'll go over a bunch of examples. And it's really just about

like when something is paid for and when it's not. I've tweeted about some of this stuff once in a while. Like I'll see a really cringy integration in a reality show or something where it's like, Hey, there's a new message from the host on the new sidekick. Like you'll see one of those weird, like obvious brand promotions. And there's always this question of like, well, why don't they have to disclose if some others do? And so Tom's video is super in-depth and goes into every one of these examples you might see of where you are required by law in certain regions to disclose when there is an ad and when you are actually explicitly not required by law in the same way to disclose. And a lot of it is just the difference

between online and TV. I thought it was fascinating. It's in the show notes. You should definitely watch it, but that's going to be our topic of discussion for a little bit. We'll come back from an ad break and we'll get deep into that. With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead. Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving.

For example, a runner could be training for a marathon or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right, welcome back. So, okay, Tom Scott's video. If you haven't, you know what? I'm not,

I don't do this very often, but if you haven't seen that video, pause this episode, go watch his video. It's really good. Come back. That's a rare recommendation. I don't do that very much, but do it. Yeah. I think what we're going to be doing here is like almost reacting to it. Like as much as I'm not a huge fan of reaction videos, this just feel like so much of it hits so close to home. And it feels like one of those videos where I'm sure people would like to see the viewpoint of somebody who's living in that world of what's getting affected. Yeah. So he does these little interjection videos these little 30 second bits in between his topic points which are kind of like these parodies of the youtuber ad that we're so used to seeing we'll listen to one of them real quick this is going to be a really difficult video to make

there are a lot of people I need to apologize to. But before that, I need to tell you about these new wireless earbuds. They sound like absolute garbage. They don't fit my ears properly. And in two days' time, I will slip up and post a photo on Instagram of me in the gym with my usual Apple AirPods in. But until then, I have been paid to tell you that these are really, really good. So, okay, we've all heard the Raycons ads, right?

Like that's, that's what he's talking about. And we can just say it because we, we kind of all know it. We've all heard it before. There's about seven advertisers that are all over YouTube. And I might've mentioned this, I forgot what podcast it was on, but like if you start to hear one company name in a lot of ads on YouTube, that's actually a green flag because it means they're doing something right.

Remember we talked about dbrand? Like dbrand's all over all sorts of tech channel ads because they're doing something right. They're easy to work with. And that's often a good sign. The other end of that is when you start to get like- Raid Shadow Legends. Well, yeah. There's the other side of that coin, obviously,

which is like when you are really easy to work with and all you do is work with basically the same format of influencer marketing, it maybe starts to get a bit formulaic and a little bit disingenuine to the point where you're just reaching out to everyone you possibly can to promote your product, even though it's not in your niche.

To your point, Raid Shadow Legends, which we'll never do an ad for. Sorry if you're listening. For the 60th time, no. Or maybe something like Raycons. So they show up in a lot of places for a reason. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. So the video kind of starts out with influencers and what we're familiar with and how they do ads and how they disclose ads and some rules between the US and the UK. And then like throughout the video, he's like we posted the audio clip before. He's just making a bunch of like parody ads of what we were all used to seeing. But he kind of I think the most important thing right here that we're going to talk about first is like what constitutes a paid sponsorship and why would you have to disclose it? And he brings in two main factors and that's payment and control. And this is something that

he gives a lot of really great examples of and we can kind of work through it and work through, this will probably be very similar to what we talked about with Mr. Mobile is where's the payment and where's the control because it's not a fine line and people kind of draw their own lines for that. I think it's a really interesting distinction, payment and control, because we've talked at length about payment because it's the super easy, obvious one. Did you get paid to say this or not? Yes, it's sponsored. No, it's not.

That seems like pretty black and white. But the control part is way more interesting where it's like, did they have any control? Did they have any approval? Did they have any input? That level of control isn't black and white. It's sort of like a dial from zero to 10. And do you have to disclose a one out of 10 or a six out of 10 or a 10 out of 10? There's a bunch of different lines in the sand.

And to Tom's point, everyone draws the line of what's acceptable just beneath what they're doing themselves, which was a great line, but it's super true. So look, I can preach all I want about how I run the MKBHD channel, but there's a bunch of different versions of this, this line in the sand of control, which I think that's a really great distinction. So I think, yeah, there's different levels of control, but there's also different levels of payment because everyone at first just thinks you got paid X amount of dollars, but could it also mean you got a free product? You got a review unit because in theory you could get a review unit early and then you make a video and then you make money off of that and it's still a privilege you get. Could you get travel expenses paid,

and are they bringing you out to dinner and stuff like that? There are a lot of different ways. I guess, do you want to do a little draw our line in the sand, do a little role play here? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

All right. Hey, Marques. I want you to make a video on my brand new car stereo. I will give you $500. Will I do the video? Will you do the video? Okay. So number one, if the agreement is payment for video, yes, that is already going to be marked as sponsored. Oftentimes my response to that, because I get a lot of emails saying, Hey, we have this device. Can we get you to make a video somehow? The answer is typically

no. But if you send it here and we play with it on our own and figure out we really like it, we'll find our way to work it into a video. If we want to, there is almost no strings attached ever when it comes to that. But to your point, if it's, Hey, we have this amount of dollars, we would like it to be featured in a video. Yes, you can pay for a sponsored integration that will be marked as a sponsor. There are going to be so many points you make that are just going to send this off topic because I already want it. But like, I think the best way and this is just like a tip for companies out there. What Mark has said, the best way to reach out to somebody is like, hey, we have this product. We just want to send it to you and have you check it out. I think that is hands down the best way to try and get your product out to somebody. Because if you truly believe in that and you send it, they'll probably check it out and you have a better shot of it coming into a video. And then you don't have to pay anything. You don't get any control off of it. So you have to make sure it's a good product. But like some of our best, I don't even want to call them integrations because it was just somebody asking for our address. We got something in the mail and it fit in a video that we were doing already,

or we liked it so much. We created a video on it. Yes. Now one extra layer on top of that, because I know we've said this enough times that companies have picked up on it. And I have another piece of advice for companies who are listening to this. Disclose if the thing that you are sending is part of a campaign. It's a really good idea to do that because at this point, so now I realize that a lot of companies have heard this device and said, all right, we'll send this thing. But they also send the same thing to a bunch of other YouTubers, sometimes friends, and we'll pay them to post about that thing, hashtag ad. And a lot of times I'll see those posts and now decide not to share that thing

because it will look like it's part of an ad campaign because everyone else is part of an ad campaign. So if you want that to get a better chance of being seen or paid attention to or just have a better relationship with the YouTuber, transparency is really key. Working on them with a campaign and not telling them there's other people in the campaign,

bad. Sending something to a YouTuber, hoping they post something for free, but also not telling them that seven other people are going to be posting ads with this thing, bad. So that's my second layer on top. Yeah, I think this is funny that we are in what should be the most obvious quote unquote line in the sand. And we're already

squiggling this line so far. Like it is just this entire world is not as cut and dry as it sounds. And there are a lot of good practices and there are a lot of bad practices. And I think we kind of want to cover a lot of them here, but it's. Yeah. I just think the whole point is to maintain a good relationship with your audience. And because we've been building trust over the years on the simple fact that we tell the truth every time, we don't want to do anything that would obviously look like it's not telling the truth or that would sully that reputation.

So obviously we try to tell the truth every time. We sort of base it on that. All right, second example here, and this happens all the time. Let's just use a laptop as an example. I'm a company and I want to send you a laptop for review. I'm not going to pay you anything for it. I just want to send it to you with the assumption that,

or with a return label, you have to send it back, but you're going to get this pre-embargo, whatever. You just get it free and you can make a review on it. Sure, cool. This is, I think, pretty great and standard. My disclosure would be, and I've made a careful note of this lately, is to always make sure I say in the description that the device was provided by the company for review. If it wasn't, there's no disclosure there.

That means I bought it or we just got our hands on it in some other way. But yeah, that'll be a pretty normal interaction with the company for us. The embargo note that you add is an interesting one, and I think it's a good one. A lot of products are pre-release or about to come out, and the companies find that it makes a lot of sense to send the device to a YouTuber or to a journalist or something before it's going to be released so that they have time to make some content about it before the embargo is up and you're allowed to publish. That is the best possible way to do it. But a lot of times you don't have that sort of time

or that sort of access. So you'll just send the thing, have a return label, let them have two weeks with it. If they want to make a video, fine, no strings attached. That's fine too. We get that all the time. And sometimes that ends up being something we really enjoy. We might feature it, we might make a video with it,

might end up in Dope Tech, whatever it is. We will disclose that it was received from that company. And I think this brings into a second example that Tom said, and this is one that's really hard to prove, I guess, is let's say a company is sending you a review unit for a phone and you've been on their review unit list for a while. You've gotten phones for years and then one year the phone sucks and you decide to just say a lot of bad things about it. Is this now in that argument of, and we've definitely talked about this before, but just in the context here, it makes sense. Are you now almost being, do they have payment or control over you because you're now worried you're not going to get another review unit after this?

Are they going to start taking things away from you where then now these old loaners start feeling like a payment? And I think ultimately there's zero way to prove this at all. Yeah. And for me, it's just been say what you got to say and find out, which to me has just been, I'm going to review it honestly. And if the next year I don't get a review unit, oh, maybe then I can sort of connect those dots. But fortunately that's never happened. That's not to say it hasn't ever happened to other people. We've seen plenty of examples of very questionable behavior when you review something and then you get a letter from the company saying they don't want to work with you anymore. Like that's pretty weird. I always think those are very strange

behaviors from companies sort of shooting themselves in the foot, but generally, uh, they've been pretty good. Yeah. I think a lot of people seem to just kind of assume that everyone's on like, not technically the payroll, but they're all worried about losing their review units when at a certain level, it's, it's going to be way, way worse on the company denying people and looks way shadier on the company denying people than it is on the reviewer for saying something bad. It's probably going to be worse. I think it does when it's high profile. When it's high profile, yeah. Because there's a lot of, I think the word access is used a lot, where like if you put yourself as just a viewer in the reviewer's shoes, you feel like, oh wow, if Apple invited me to an event,

I would want to say lots of nice things and make lots of great videos about their event so that I get access to the next event. And that's like a sort of pressure that's imaginable that I think some people may feel. And at the level that we're at, fortunately we don't feel that pressure. So we're able to make every video as honest as possible.

And that's the whole point of the channel is to be honest. But I think when you start to look down the line, you see a little bit of that pressure still affecting people where they don't want to say too much negative. And usually there's not too much negative to say. But if there is, you think a little extra about how much you want to talk about it. Samsung sent me one of maybe six or seven review units of the first Galaxy Fold to ever show up in the hands of people. I made a video about how it broke. It got over 10 million views. They immediately, when the next one came out, were keen to send me one to show me all the things that were better

about the phone. So I felt like the relationship has been pretty good and based on honesty. So I guess that's the line in the sand. And so last one here, which is hard for us to talk on because we've mentioned this is something we just have never really done. But if somebody, I'm a company now and I want you to come test out my new car, I'm going to fly you out to California, put you up in a nice hotel, pay for your dinners. And all you have to do is come and check out our car and maybe make a video on it. My response to those emails is always, if I do want to go, we'll pay for our flights. We'll pay for our hotel. We'll check it out. And there's obviously no strings attached. I think you mentioned that that's not something we do because other people will just

accept the flight or accept the payment for the hotel or, you know, going out to exotic locations. I think I talked about this last time, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit, which is like in Hawaii every year, which is like, obviously they're showing you a chip and it's just a computer chip. But now you're in Hawaii and you feel tempted to go out and start doing, you know, videos in this beautiful nature with these smartphones with the chip in them. So it is a pretty detailed, obvious strategy. But yeah, we'll we'll pay for our own way. I think it's context matters, though, because for some other people who, you know, maybe are smaller, like they wouldn't be able to cover some things unless their flight was paid for.

And I know there's plenty of super trustworthy people out there who get flights paid for because that's the only way they would be able to do that coverage. So it really comes down to just making sure you have the real reasons to trust somebody whose opinion you're listening to. And then the more you trust them, the more you can hopefully understand that they'll disclose the things they feel like they need to be disclosed in order to keep your opinion. Okay, so we talked about payment and now control, I think is like one of the most important, I mean, payments obviously important, but for most people, it's just like, I want to pay you this much. And I also want to have a final say in the product that comes out of this. So like

if those two things happen, if you get paid and if they have to edit the video, or if they give you things you have to say, then that is like the most cut and dry version of a sponsored post that you can have. And I think control is something that's really big and something that kind of turns us off to a lot of sponsored stuff. Personally, here's a question. Here's a question because this has never happened. But what if you get an offer to make a video about something and just before you post it, they want to see the video just to make sure they, you know, fact check and make sure you got everything right.

Do you mark that as sponsored? Did they wait? Did they pay for this video? They did not pay for the video. They sent you the device on a loaner. You do a normal video with it and they ask, hey, just before you publish it, can we see the video just to do any fact checking? Fact checking?

I feel like they try and use that term a lot, but what that really means is I want to edit it. I mean, we've definitely had people ask for fact-checking before, and I think at most we've kind of sent them a script, and if we have a name wrong or something, that's the only thing. I think that's always been a sponsor.

I've never sent approval. I think one time we got the 3090 a little early and they just wanted to make sure we had like the name of the recording software correctly or something like that yeah other than that no no one sees our script if people ask to see something beforehand no yeah people ask to change things afterwards. I mean, we've had times where people have sent stuff and it's made it into a video and like maybe in the links of the show notes underneath it, we like spelled something wrong or gave a link to the wrong version of something. And like if it's just us clearly making a mistake,

sure. But there are people who have sent things over asking if they can have their links put into a video. Remember, what was that screen protector company for the curved Samsung phones? I don't even want to say their name, but they asked to be in the description of every video. We just mentioned them one time in a video because they were like one of the only screen

protectors for fingerprint reader, right? The underscreen fingerprint reader. And they've asked to be in the description of like every Samsung video we've ever made. Yeah. A lot of companies ask for things for free that are typically paid is basically what we're saying. So asking to have a link shared on Twitter is like a nice, sometimes common courtesy. If you're just like, oh, hey, you talked about our thing. Would you mind sharing the thing with our followers? But that's also what a sponsored post is, is when you ask for someone to share something with their audience and you compensate them properly for sharing your message with their

audience. So if you're a company wondering, hey, oh, he mentioned our thing. Can we just email him and ask him nicely to put the link in the description? Sure, they might do it, but don't expect that to just happen for free every time out of the kindness of their hearts. The description is a very tailored,

very deliberate place where things go. And sometimes the link's there, sometimes it's lower down, sometimes it's not. I've had companies say, hey, you have our link there. Can you move it up above the fold? No, it's structured the way it is for a reason. So yeah, a lot of times if you're a creator out there listening to this and you get companies asking you to do things that sound like sponsored bits and probably could be sponsored bits, but they're not offering to do a sponsored deal with you, probably follow up and ask if they can work together with you on something like a sponsored deal with you, probably follow up and ask if they can work

together with you on something like a sponsored deal or recognize that what you're doing is out of the kindness of your heart. And they'll probably continue to ask you to do that stuff until you work with them in a more well-defined, structured manner. That's my advice. I think the original question to this was, what if you're creating a video on a review unit and before the video goes out, they ask you if they can see it? Our answer is just no to that. Oh, a review? No. Or like a review. No, I mean, pretty much anything. If there's not a payment or a contract involved and it is just something that was sent to us and we decide to make a video and they ask to see it beforehand, we just say no. Now, here's another thing. In the journalism world, it is pretty common to ask, to reach out for clarification about

things that you're wondering about if you have any questions to the company. So say you get a phone from company X to review, you spend a week with it, you found that some things are good, you found some things are bad. For me, typically for the past decade, the process ends there. And my reporting to the audience is on what went well and what went badly. And the company sees that video right alongside the audience and finds out what bugs I had. In the journalism world, it's very common to take the positives as they are, then take the negatives back to the company and ask for comment on them. So you can say, I had this issue with company X's product

and their promise was, hey, next software update, it'll be fixed. And I've considered that a little more and I haven't done it yet. Still to this day, I really don't go back to companies and talk about what's going to be in the review before the review. Kind of like that statement you hear

at the end of a Mr. Mobile video is they're watching it at the same time as you. That's the way it's always been. But I admire that. It's an interesting trait of a typical like written tech review or something in the journalism world that I think is worth considering. I wouldn't be against it. And I think some YouTubers might consider it. Yeah. I mean, we've definitely reached out on things. Things have happened with phones where we were genuine. I wish I had an exact example of this, but we've had things happen with units that almost like to us, we're like, there's no way this is what it would do.

We're doing something wrong. And I think we've reached out one or two times to try and figure out how to work something correctly. Like when I ripped the screen protector off the Galaxy. Oh yeah, well, yeah, we definitely did email them and say like, Well say like uh well that okay that story just so I can tell it in order that was an unboxing and first impressions video where the entire video was almost done editing and I realized in my notes I wanted to have a screen protector peel shot and so I went back recorded the screen protector peel realized that it turned the screen off and went, okay, hold on a sec.

We'll get back to that. Something happened. Go back to the video, finish it, publish it without any screen protector, like shield shot or information about it. Then go back to, I guess the next morning, I'm like trying to figure it out and I see other people start to tweet about their displays.

And then I tweet adding to the threads, like here's what happened to mine. and we all start to figure out what's going on yeah and then we went to Samsung and then Samsung goes uh we'll take those back please yeah and then we made a video yeah and then we made a video about this the update to what had happened and yes to those asking I did have footage of it turning off and I accidentally formatted the card as I went to shoot the next video. So that's the unfortunate truth of that extremely ironic shot that probably would have been super great to have anyway. So that's, yeah, we, we don't typically go to a company with information about our review or a video before the video is up. I think it's safe to say, even that are, when we do do sponsored

stuff where they do have control. And I mean, their control over the video is generally like, here's one or two talking points we'd really like you to talk about because they're the main reason we're advertising this. And then like some sort of call to action, probably. I mean, I'm sure you're all listening to the podcast. Every podcast ad has a call to action at the end. It's just pretty, it's a pretty standard way to kind of see usually how the advertisement is working and whether they want to work for you again Again, this is sponsored by this. Here's what we want you to know about it. Visit this link. Whatever. Yeah. So it's all like just analytics for them. But when it comes to control for a lot of ours, we're usually really strict on it in the sense of like you guys get a very small version of edits and it's usually like, did we misspeak and something isn't exactly

how it works? Or did we call something the wrong name? Or did this not reach the set amount of limits? Or did we miss a talking point? But if we have something in there that they don't necessarily like, they don't really get control over that. They get what's in the original contract and that's about it. Yep, exactly. And a lot of it, we do stuff with Dope Tech as well. And something like that is not an entire video. It is a portion of the video. They get no say in anything else that is in the video. If they pay for two minutes of Dope Tech,

they get two minutes of Dope Tech and everything surrounding that. We've stopped showing them the full videos at this point. We film the segments and send it to them and they don't even know what else is going to be. Yeah, sometimes I just kind of want to know, hey, are any of our competitors, like direct competitors also in this episode?

And it's like, oh yeah, no. It's just like a poor move if we do something like that. Like they have to have a little trust in us. We feature like one tablet and then also have the iPad in the same video. Yeah, that'd be pretty funny. I think we want to get back to the last big topic,

which is if YouTubers have to disclose, why doesn't anyone else? Yes, and that's what the meat of this Tom Scott video was about. Perfect. So we'll take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk all about that. This is an ad from BetterHelp.

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about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at NetSuite dot com slash waveform. NetSuite dot com slash waveform. All right, we're back. Let's talk about TV. So we've seen when you watch TV, when you when you like end the game and go into halftime and the commercials come on, you know, when you're watching an ad, right? You see the commercials. You're like, this is an

ad like physical commercial. Yes. Hi, welcome to McDonald's. This is a this is an ad for the new Baconator. Well, about the music's playing This is an ad for the new Baconator. Well, the music's playing. You know you're watching an ad, right? It is very important to me and I think to a lot of people to recognize when you're seeing an ad versus when you're seeing something else, like some regular content. about when we talk about Tom Scott's video, when we talk about YouTube, is there are rules specifically dedicated to making sure humans know when what they're watching is an ad or when it's not. And those rules are very strict online, on YouTube, especially with the FTC. And they are significantly more relaxed in like Hollywood, in movies, in TV shows, inside of the shows themselves, especially in the US.

Relaxed is like way too nice. I mean, they're basically non-existent is the easiest way to put it. It's pretty poor. And I think Tom's point, which is great, is because when you see this discrepancy, you're like, all right, well, YouTubers really have to like overly state like in titles, in thumbnails, in the first five seconds of the video when something's sponsored and TV shows hardly have to say a thing. Which do you change? Do you move TV shows and things like that to be more strict or do you move YouTubers to be less strict? argument is people deserve to know when they're being advertised to make Hollywood and make this other industry that's been advertising for a century catch up and actually disclose when

things are being advertised. Yeah, I agree. I think one of the it's like this one of the strictest rules for TV is and movies are if there's some paid for product placement or whatever, it's like in the credit somewhere it has to disclose that. Yeah. Which is just like the, you might as well not even have it at that point. I didn't say it in the video, but I love that the difference between what you have to disclose on YouTube versus a movie is crazy. Like if I were to have a, like a bottle of Coke, this is a theoretical example, but like

a bottle of Coke where I hold it up and go, wow, this bottle of Coke is tasty and take a sip. And that was paid for by Coke. I would have to have several things ready. I'd have to have ad in the top of the description or the title. I'd have to disclose before any of the rest of the video in the first five seconds that there is paid product placement.

Even if the sip of Coke is in the last five seconds of the video. And then I'd have to have all these other like hashtags and things that all make it very obvious that it's sponsored. And in a movie, if I do that same exact thing, I get paid. I do the Coke thing. I hold it up to the camera. I don't have to disclose in the name of the movie, in the movie poster,

in the first five seconds of the movie, or even anywhere in the movie or the descriptions of the movie. I basically just put the little fine print at the end when the credits are scrolling at a thousand miles an hour that say special thanks to Coca-Cola on this partnership for this video, and it just flies by and you never know. That to me is the difference between

clearly understanding that you're being advertised to and clearly missing that you're being advertised to. That's the point of the video. And so it seems like in TV and movies, correct me if I'm wrong here, but the main argument seems to be that they are characters and that, especially in fiction, although they've made this case for like a quote unquote reality, like I think the Hills is a crazy example of this where it's like a scripted reality show that is just littered, absolutely littered with product placement. Um, right. But that since people are watching a TV show or a movie, it's generally fictional and that people

should understand that this is not a real person giving a review. Yeah. I find that that's so funny is like, how much credit do you give to the intelligence of the viewer? Because Tom mentions in the video, now that you guys have watched it and I'm not spoiling anything, he mentions a case where someone is able to defend themselves against a lawsuit by saying, it wasn't me that advertised the thing undisclosed. It was the character that I play who happens to have the same name as me in the show.

It's just an exaggerated version of me that I play on camera. That character is the one that didn't add. And that, like, does a regular person think that way at all? No. Most people don't watch a TV show and make that distinction.

When people see MKBHD in the streets, they think I'm the person from the videos because that's the way it looks. That's like clearly how people think. I mean, like, could we consider you a character? MKBHD, the reviewer, are you a character because you don't go to Target and sit in the TV aisle and say, like, tell people which TV they should buy. So therefore, you're not really a reviewer. So you should be able to be the character, the reviewer character.

According to the law, I can get away with that. Yes, I could get away with that exact description of my job is I'm just playing a character. Oh, yeah. We're not going to, obviously. But so I think Tom's... So when he wraps the whole video up, he mentions this one line that I think kind of wraps his entire video up, or at least the argument based on characters here.

I think he was specifically talking about a James Bond movie where he has a Rolex and someone, a character in the movie says like, Rolexes are beautiful. If the argument there is that a fictional character has no influence because it's fictional. His argument is if characters expressing opinions didn't influence people, companies wouldn't pay for the placement. So it just is completely false that these fictional characters, I mean, if I'm 12 years old and Superman's drinking Coca-Cola, I'm probably going to want to drink Coca-Cola. I think what we're saying is Superman's an influencer. Superman's an influencer.

As much as we hate that word, it's like if you want to pin all YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers as influencers and to loop them into the FTC guidelines, you should include people on TV, people in movies, because they have not the same, but they have a level of influence, which is the reason why they're being paid to advertise in the first place. So influencer guidelines should apply. That's the bottom line. All right. So in our case right now, Marques, are you saying that since actors, we'll just call it traditional media, since they don't have to follow the same rules we do, what you're saying

is influencers should be able to follow the same rules they do, right? And you now want to start shilling out and you want to be able to advertise whatever you want, no repercussions, no disclosure, and just get paid the big bucks and go buy five Lamborghinis, right? I'm sure some people would read it that way, but no. I'm advocating for pulling the rope in the opposite direction, which is we all properly and for good reason have to disclose when we're advertising. Because look, the other end of this is like when a kid is watching a video or when someone who doesn't know they're being advertised to watches a video, they're unfairly being

influenced in a way. And there are laws against advertising on kids' shows. There's laws against advertising on health and unsafe things. And those are because when you advertise those things, you influence people to do them and that's dangerous or harmful. So the point is, people should know when they're being advertised to. And so if there's a world like on TV, or like in Hollywood, where people can advertise whatever they want, typically, it's not like

harmful things. It's not bad things all the time. But it's just a good line to draw in the sand, to make sure it's not like harmful things it's not bad things all the time but it's just a good line to draw in the sand to make sure it's not a gray area where people just know when they're being advertised to now the other thing is Tom did in his video this great bit where he played back and forth some versions of things that sound like ads in in the social world and things that sound like ads in Hollywood oftentimes they sound exactly like things that are ads even though they aren't which was a perfect point to know we don't know when and things that sound like ads in Hollywood. Oftentimes they sound exactly like things that are ads, even though they aren't,

which was a perfect point to know we don't know when we're being advertised to when we're watching a movie. So yeah, I think that's the argument. Bring that rope just a little bit further back, you know, rein them in, make sure it's all on fair ground. Yeah, and in a perfect world,

and obviously neither side of this is absolutely perfect, but in a perfect world of your disclosing advertisements, it should really be win-win for everybody. I actually think it should be a win-win-win. Yeah. So it should be a win for all three parties involved because I think there are three. The creator making a video should feel like they got a win because they were able to make something or share something that they ordinarily would not have. And that's a win for the creator. Their video got better or that's a win for the creator because they got paid. It should be a win for the advertiser because of course, when they look at

this, they're able to share their product or their message to a new audience. They get access to this audience to share their message. That's of course a win for them. And to a new audience. They get access to this audience to share their message. That's of course a win for them. And a very targeted audience. Definitely. But it should also be a win for the viewer, meaning they should get to watch a better video. They should get exposed to something that they wouldn't have ordinarily been able to. And that's fun. And that could either be a learning experience or just finding something new that you didn't know about before. And that should feel like a win instead of like slipping it underneath the rug where you don't realize you're being advertised to. And now suddenly this becomes a little bit shady. So I think I describe it as a win, win, win. Yeah. In the win, win, win scenario, I'm sure the hardest thing

to argue there is the consumer. But if you think about how you watch a YouTube video on a Samsung phone and how you watch a commercial on TV of a Samsung phone, you come into it with different opinions because you're just, you know, you're being advertised to from the start. So if everything that has payment behind it and advertisers behind it gets disclosed, you'll generally look at it that way. And you know, you can make your decision based on, I know there's payment involved behind this and it should help consumers figure out what they want to spend their hard-earned money on. So maybe we'll end this by giving some examples of a win-win loss.

A win-win loss. Yeah. I want to go around the horn because I know there's always a version, because we say no to 99% of these things is because they don't fit the win-win-win, right? So here, I'll try to give an example of a win-win loss where each party may feel like they're losing. So the easiest one is a win-win loss where the creator loses. A win for the advertiser and a win for the audience and a loss for the creator. Oftentimes you end up feeling like that's two losses. You think that's the easiest? I think that's the hardest one to pick. So I think it feels like a loss for the creator and also a loss for the audience, which is why

it might not feel like a single loss. But basically you take an ad or a brand deal or whatever you want to call it. It's a product that's either something you don't really believe in or it's not good. They pay you, you say yes, you make the ad and it's just not actually good. And you share something with the audience that's bad. And so that's a loss for the audience and a loss for the creator. So maybe, maybe it is a double loss. Yeah, I think let's start with a different one because I think win-win loss where the creator loses has got to be the hardest one. The easiest one I think is win-win loss for creator, advertiser, consumer, where creator gets paid, advertiser gets a video out of it, and it's just a terrible video and the audience loses.

Bad product, bad video. Yeah. Or I guess the other sense is if you just completely disregard regulations and don't disclose, then creator gets paid, advertiser gets a good video, audiences lied to and get sold a cruddy product. I think that's also a loss for the creator.

I think it's a loss for the creator because their video is worse. I think it's a loss for the creator because they probably know deep down inside that it's a bad product or that what they overlooked has been exposed as bad and now they feel bad. And I think it's a loss for the creator because now your future reputation or ability to do these sorts of honest things is tarnished. So I think it turns into a loss because of the single loss. Yeah. Well, I have three tweets that can prove that not everyone thinks the same way. So, uh, fair. Yeah. I don't know if I appreciate you for your honesty. I think that's why this channel has a lot of trust behind it, but I think there are plenty of examples that

okay. Sometimes it can feel like a loss to the company trying to work the ad. And I I'm here to, I'm here to calm them down about why I don't think it's so bad. A lot of times we'll be working with a company and that company, when they decided to work with the creator, you'd think they decide to work with the creator because the creator knows how to best speak to that audience, right? So when we work with this creator A, we want to advertise our new drink and we want to put it in his hands and let him decide how to advertise the drink. Now, when I pay for a TV ad that's scripted that we produce, we're going to tell him how many grams of sugar it doesn't have. We're going to tell him exactly what the nutrition facts are and how much better it tastes than our last version.

But when we give it to this creator, we want him to do his thing and he'll be the most effective with it, right? creator. We want him to do his thing and he'll be the most effective with it, right? Oftentimes, it doesn't look like that where the company will get so locked into this, like, make sure you say this, this, and this. They end up basically wanting to give you a script more or less. And they think that that's the best way to get the creator to say the best things about the product. That oftentimes is the worst way because it feels way out of character for the creator. It takes it out of that creator's voice and it makes the ad feel much less natural. When at the end of the day, the reason you wanted to work with that creator is because he has his language or she has her language to best communicate to their audience.

And you took that away by trying to put all these bullet points in. So I think a lot of times when you let the creator go off and do whatever crazy idea they have to make the best video, it can feel like a loss to the company because, oh, he's not going to say our bullet points. He's not going to say how many grams of sugar it has. But I think that's actually at the end of the day, probably the best thing to do is to let the creator create and you provide the best you can as far as money, but also as far as like the, the entire video production process to enable a better video that wouldn't have been possible before. There's a reason you're paying the creator who's gained that much of an audience based on what he knows how to do. Let he or she knows how to do, let them do that and stop taking it away from

them. Exactly. So I think through this little game we've played, we've decided that it's way harder to tell than we really think because it's really hard for one person to lose because when one side loses, usually another side loses. Right. When a creator loses, typically their audience also loses. And when an audience is clearly taking the L, it's because the creator took the L. Generally, a company can lose if they just pick the wrong creator or they just pick the wrong product in general

that's just a bad fit or they just pile on the bullet points and make a terrible ad out of a... But then the creator loses too because they made a bad video. Everybody just lost. Yeah. That's a triple L.

Okay. Well, I guess we did learn. Yeah, we learned our own lesson. We learned the difficulty of our own game. But I think that's basically what we wanted to talk about. This is probably overload. This is probably in the weeds for a lot of people if we're just going deep into the creator economy stuff.

But there's a lot of people who are creators who listen and maybe people who are watching videos who are curious about this stuff. So I'm glad we get to talk about it once in a while. But I promise we'll be back on all the gadget stuff and all the tech next week because that's what's happening. It's the wild world of tech. We'll link the Tom Scott video below. You should definitely watch it if you haven't already. It's in half an hour long. Worth every minute.

Pop some popcorn, sit back, relax, watch that one. It's really good. And also we tweeted on the waveform Twitter. Let us know what you guys want to see as far as guests on the show. We've had occasional guests. We've had people from the tech, you know, corporate world, the Craig Federighis of the world. We've had people who are just creators, just like us, who are really fun

from Justine and Jenna to, who was the last one who was on the podcast? We've had Panos on, we've had Mr. Beast, we've had Mr. Mobile. It's a wide variety, but I think there's a lot of stuff in this world that's fun. So if you haven't already, tweet at us.

Who would you want to have as a guest on the podcast? What should we talk about with them? Can I make a suggestion? Well, I'm right here, yeah. Oh, no, no, sorry. Not a suggestion for people tweeting at us. Okay. We're going to get a million tweets that say Peter McKinnon, which obviously we would love

to get on, and big creators that everybody knows and we we know and we'll definitely probably have them on already. I really want to talk to some like deep industry people who are like really hard focused on some project or some new technology that's coming out. And like maybe we don't know their name and maybe you know they're working on something crazy. So it's a kind of stuff like that. I like I would love to talk when we went up and met Zach from Boston dynamics, like I would love to have him on the podcast. Cause just spending a day with him was fascinating. And I want everyone to have that opportunity. So here's a tweet, tweet the person, tag them and what we should talk about, why we should have them on. Yes. Give us both of those things, please. Cool. All right. That's been it for this episode.

Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you're having a good February. Hope you're staying warm. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Wayform is produced by Adam Molina. We are partnered with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.