You can’t buy reviews… But Companies Keep Trying.
It feels like almost every day I have a company asking to sponsor a “review”. It drives me up the wall, I always say no, but many don’t and I think you should be mad about it. On top of that, the number of comments I get saying that a sponsored video is a “great review” is worrying – it means many don’t know the difference between unbiased, objective coverage, and paid, controlled advertising. So, to start 2022 in style, I’m making it very clear what I will and won’t do, and why – and calling a few offenders out too.
Some of you watching might have first found my channel thanks to the MSI issue – I hope I’ve proven quite clearly I’m not interested in bribes, and care a whole lot about my integrity and trustworthiness. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for sponsored content and advertisements, but that place isn’t in reviews. Reviews, by nature, are pieces of content you come to to find out how good a product is, how it compares to its competitors, and if it lives up to the promises it itself makes. If the company is literally paying you for that content, telling you what you can and can’t say, when you can and can’t post it, what you can and can’t link to or recommend, you cannot be objective. You can’t provide a fair assessment of the product. You literally aren’t allowed.
When something is labelled as a “review”, that signifies that the reviewer was fully in control of that content. They can say what they like, compare it to whatever they want, post it when they like – after embargos of course. It should tell you, the viewer, that it’s something you can trust as good quality information – not something bought and paid for by the company that makes it. You aren’t being sold to, you are being informed – and that’s a big difference.
Personally, I like to label sponsored content as either a “showcase” or “overview”. That is an important differentiator, because it shows that the purpose of the video is to showcase, to show off, the product. To demonstrate the key selling points the company is looking to make clear about their product. While I’m always firm about what I cover – I won’t cover a product I wouldn’t otherwise recommend, I won’t say I like something if I don’t or give some fake personal plea for you to buy their stuff – in general they still have final say in what goes into the video, when it gets posted and even if it gets posted. And actually, as per the UK’s advertising standards agency’s requirements, I even put “AD” in the thumbnails of those videos so you know, even before clicking on the video, that it’s a piece of sponsored content. It’s also always made clear in the video, and at the top line of the description so you really can’t miss it.
Now, to give the benefit of doubt to many PR and marketing staff, when they say “sponsored review” and I say “don’t ask for a review, ask for a showcase or overview”, they generally respond with an apology and say they meant a showcase but didn’t know review and showcase were different. I could be being naive, or too trusting, but I try to practice the notion of not attributing malice to what can be adequately explained by stupidity. I do worry that newer creators who are just looking to get their foot in the door, or people who are more in the “influencer” category than “reviewer” will still agree to those requests and label their sponsored content as a “review”, but I try my best.
Sometimes though, the PR people don’t take the hint. Some outright say they want a sponsored review where they are looking for basically the illusion of a review, but only listing the negatives of competitors, if at all, and only the positives of their product. Sometimes they even ask to not label that as sponsored content, which is a sure-fire way to get some hefty fines and penalties from the ASA and Ofcom. Please, any other content creators watching, never agree to this kind of BS.
Sometimes they are more subtle. Much like HyperX, where late last year they offered a selection of products for review and were painfully insistent on paying for reviews. They said that, ‘no it’s ok we only want to pay to secure their spot on your schedule’ – this is much more insidious than it seems. I mean they say “As these are reviews, we completely accept that the outcome would be determined by your experience with them and we wouldn’t want to influence these at all. We just want to pay to guarantee their scheduling.”, so it’s all good right? Yeah, no. If you agree to let them pay you “for their scheduling”, you’ve given up control of the content. Even if you get it in writing that the only thing they are paying for is a specific date and time the content will go live on, they now control when the content goes live, and it’s not uncommon for companies to then ask to just not publish the content if they don’t like it, or if they are more underhanded about it they say “oh we need to move this back a few weeks as we have a problem with the product we are trying to get fixed”, or some other lie.
They’ll ask to see the review before it goes live – you have to say no to that at all costs, because the second they see something they don’t like they’ll pressure you to change it, or not post it. Once something is live they realise there isn’t much they can do, but if it isn’t live yet they’ll throw everything at you to keep it hidden (MSI, for example, with bribes, threats, and roping in other companies to threaten me too).
What also happens is larger sites will often refuse to review products from companies, until those companies buy advertising space with them. They’ll give priority to those companies, or even refuse to review competitor products if they are really bold about it.
On top of those issues, there is also the subconscious issue of them literally paying you for that piece of content. Sure it’s “only for the spot on the schedule”, but especially if you don’t get much sponsored work it’s going to affect your thoughts and feelings on the product, making for a lack of objectivity that is so crucial to a good, trustworth review.
There is plenty of nuance to the argument, including taking any sponsorship money or receiving review samples, but for me that is a lot less clear cut than taking money for reviews. The words “sponsored” or “paid” and “review” are incompatible to me, and I urge others to share that view.
So, what will I do for companies? Well, I’m happy to take review samples, so long as they have no strings attached. If it’s for a review, they don’t get to tell me I have to talk about certain things, post at a certain time (although after an embargo lifts, ie once a product launches, is fine) and they don’t get to see the review before it goes live (if I have major issues I normally reach out as it could be a faulty unit or something I misunderstood). If they want to pay me, they can either pay for a pre-roll ad spot, as in a 30 second plug at the start of a non-conflicting video, or they can buy a full sponsored video, which will be labelled clearly and normally called either a “showcase” or “overview”. If companies want to pay me to make content for them, I’m happy to do that within reason too, but beyond that, that’s it. No paid reviews, full stop, period, end of conversation.
