Burger King advertiser abuses twitch donation system

[spartaman64]

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Burger King has come under fire for crossing this line. Rather than gaining the permission of popular personalities, they pushed forward with a controversial marketing scheme. They created new Twitch accounts in order to sneakily donate with one clear intention. These donations would come with messages that promote the latest deals across America.

From popular variety streamers to competitive veterans, Burger King targeted some of the biggest streams. Naturally, it didn’t take long before most caught on and fired back at the fast-food franchise. 

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Marketing agency ‘Ogilvy’ sought out to create a unique method of advertising on Twitch. The client was Burger King and the company decided that using donations was the best way to get the brand across. “Burger King turned Twitch's donation feature into a marketing campaign,” an August 19 tweet explained.

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Without contacting streamers directly, the marketing team donated exact amounts of Burger King’s “best offers.” These donations would then appear on stream with messages that outlined certain deals that viewers can get for small amounts, be it $5 or less.

“I donated five bucks so I can say that on the Burger King app you can get a whopper and a small french fries for five dollars,” one donation included. This instance was directed at Call of Duty veteran and mega-popular Warzone streamer Tyler ‘TeePee’ Polchow. “Listen… are you going to sponsor me or not?” TeePee responded in the moment.

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It turns out that there was no collaboration between the parties whatsoever. “Just a random dono,” he replied in the August 19 thread. “They did it a couple more times and then I stopped it from happening because it was weird.”

Plenty of Twitch streamers soon followed up, frustrated by their inclusion in the marketing campaign without consenting. Faces were blurred, voices were modified, and no callouts were provided to outline the streamers in focus.

“I really despise when companies take advantage of my live content in order to push their ads,” AnneMunition said.

source: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-streamers-lash-out-burger-king-takes-advantage-new-ads-1408444

 

The donation messages are meant for twitch streamers to connect with their audience and its irresponsible to use it for advertisement without getting an OK from the streamer. Sponsorship deals costs much more than 5 dollars and here the advertiser is trying to game that system by getting the out reach without having to pay the streamer as much. Also its bad manners in general as if twitch streamers use another streamer's donation system to advertise their own channels it would get a lot of bad drama so I'm not sure why ogilvy thought this is acceptable.

[TempestCatto]

Gotta wonder if there should be laws in place that protect the streamers/content creators from this kind of thing.

[Guest]

The King would like to know your location.

[mr moose]

Annoying for some users and streamers, but a smart move from the marketing company.  Many people would just see it like sponsorship, maybe even buy into it.

 

 

[TheBean]

2 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Gotta wonder if there should be laws in place that protect the streamers/content creators from this kind of thing.

thats a good joke.. somebody will make it political somehow and then nothing will ever happen.. just like every other real issue in the world. 

[Trik'Stari]

2 minutes ago, Saksham said:

thats a good joke.. somebody will make it political somehow and then nothing will ever happen.. just like every other real issue in the world. 

Until 4Chan spams the most popular streamers (including that one that thinks it's a deer) with pro Trump messages.

 

Which would be hysterical.

[jaslion]

Makes you wonder why they haven't done this before or more. It is effective. Subtle marketing for people that aren't actively watching, mildly annoying for the ones that are, convincing for the people that take it at face value that some random is telling that or it may be a sponsorship, good for putting an idea in someones head (negative or not it is still pushing the name around) and most importantly cheap for reaching a mass audience.

 

It won't be long now that this has been thrown into media before more companies, groups and trolls start abusing the system now.

[Kisai]

44 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

source: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/twitch-streamers-lash-out-burger-king-takes-advantage-new-ads-1408444

 

The donation messages are meant for twitch streamers to connect with their audience and its irresponsible to use it for advertisement without getting an OK from the streamer. Sponsorship deals costs much more than 5 dollars and here the advertiser is trying to game that system by getting the out reach without having to pay the streamer as much. Also its bad manners in general as if twitch streamers use another streamer's donation system to advertise their own channels it would get a lot of bad drama so I'm not sure why ogilvy thought this is acceptable.

Looks like the donation system in twitch and youtube has finally bit someone on the ass.

 

See a lot of streamers will just read off the "superchat" mechanism, or have it automatically read by like a TTS software. So while is is a bit scummy of a brand to do, I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. Same BK that did this:

Remember that? Three years ago. This isn't that cute Burger King.

 

I will give them credit for one thing though, I'd rather an idiot marketer find loop hole and annoy people to show what the problem is, because people don't take it seriously when it's kids mouthing off.

[BobVonBob]

Just reprogram your TTS system to replace "burger king" with "mcdonalds" and "whopper" with "big mac". That'll stop them real quick.

[AndreiArgeanu]

That's actually pretty smart, not gonna lie.

[CarlBar]

I'm kinda surprised this isn't against Twitch's ToS, if it isn't i bet it will be rather quickly as it's taking away ad revenue they could get from adds playing before the video.

[Athan Immortal]

10 hours ago, Kisai said:

Looks like the donation system in twitch and youtube has finally bit someone on the ass.

 

See a lot of streamers will just read off the "superchat" mechanism, or have it automatically read by like a TTS software. So while is is a bit scummy of a brand to do, I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. Same BK that did this:

Remember that? Three years ago. This isn't that cute Burger King.

 

I will give them credit for one thing though, I'd rather an idiot marketer find loop hole and annoy people to show what the problem is, because people don't take it seriously when it's kids mouthing off.

I'd totally forgotten about that ad. I love that people edited the wikipedia page to rebel

 

10 hours ago, CarlBar said:

I'm kinda surprised this isn't against Twitch's ToS, if it isn't i bet it will be rather quickly as it's taking away ad revenue they could get from adds playing before the video.

I had a quick (I do mean quick) look through the TOS and the Twitch Bits acceptable use policy. None of it mentions anything against delivering your own message.

 

However I'm not sure the Twitch TOS could cover this since most donations like the one mentioned in the OP are through third party sites that the streamer just overlays into the video stream. At most Twitch could look down on this kind of advertising using its streamers and ban Burger king from directly advertising with them, but I doubt that will happen.

 

It's really just a bit of a douche move on the advertiser's part, and in some way probably should be regulated, after all lets say someone who was vegan got those advertisements on their stream, they never would have wanted to partner with a company they were morally opposed to. Or maybe a key seller like G2A started using this method and someone has an objection to using that site and service etc.

 

Guess streamers will just need to weigh up the risk of auto-reads for the moment.

[Vanderburg]

Yes, please whine some more about how someone gave you money. Good on Burger King. Now I need some chicken fries. Did you know that you can get an order of BK® Chicken Fries for only $2.99 on the BK® mobile app?! Download now for free!

[Tech_Dreamer]

that's actually smart, kinda devious doe. rather than spending millions for a few seconds of ads on platform, you can target it very specifically to an age group with far less money.

[Soppro]

Don't know why a marketing company doesn't have the professional courtesy to at least notify streamers of their campaign, I'm sure many of them would have accepted them had they known about it ..

 

It's just kind of sad how they're abusing what was a perfectly fine way of donating to your favourite streamer and exploiting it for their own gain, now there will need to be controls in place, but worst of all it's gonna be turned into a meme ... just like Raid Shadow Legends, one of the biggest mobile role-playing games of 2019! Currently almost 10 million users have joined Raid over the last six months, and it's one of the most impressive games in its class with detailed models, environments and smooth 60 frames per second animations!

[Beerzerker]

So it all backfired.....
I'd call it flame-broiled marketing that backdrafted in their face.

BTW you want fries with that?

[rawrdaysgoby]

Twitch gets their share, streamers get their share. Burger King gets a 3 second robot shoutout. Big streamers should set their donation button to 100$ a message. Eh Twitch might have to update their ToS

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, rawrdaysgoby said:

Twitch gets their share, streamers get their share. Burger King gets a 3 second robot shoutout. Big streamers should set their donation button to 100$ a message. Eh Twitch might have to update their ToS

There's no requirement to throw any minimum payment on Twitch any more than there is on Youtube. If you want to set a minimum, you rig your software to only trigger superchats from those who are subscribed (and thus already paying money.)

[spartaman64]

On 8/21/2020 at 6:18 PM, Trik'Stari said:

Until 4Chan spams the most popular streamers (including that one that thinks it's a deer) with pro Trump messages.

 

Which would be hysterical.

i mean most popular streamers are probably no strangers to donation messages that contain racial slurs etc

[ravenshrike]

On 8/21/2020 at 6:11 PM, TempestCatto said:

Gotta wonder if there should be laws in place that protect the streamers/content creators from this kind of thing.

 

On 8/21/2020 at 6:13 PM, mr moose said:

Annoying for some users and streamers, but a smart move from the marketing company.  Many people would just see it like sponsorship, maybe even buy into it.

 

 

The ads almost certainly violate various FTC disclosure regs regarding internet advertising. Depending on how much BK knew about the ad campaign before it began they may be on the hook as well.

[AdmiralMeowmix]

On 8/22/2020 at 7:25 AM, Vanderburg said:

Yes, please whine some more about how someone gave you money. Good on Burger King. Now I need some chicken fries. Did you know that you can get an order of BK® Chicken Fries for only $2.99 on the BK® mobile app?! Download now for free!

 

2 hours ago, rawrdaysgoby said:

Twitch gets their share, streamers get their share. Burger King gets a 3 second robot shoutout. Big streamers should set their donation button to 100$ a message. Eh Twitch might have to update their ToS

 

On 8/21/2020 at 4:13 PM, mr moose said:

Annoying for some users and streamers, but a smart move from the marketing company.  Many people would just see it like sponsorship, maybe even buy into it.

 

 

Issue: $5 is not worth advertising a company. A normal deal for advertising even just once is a few thousand dollars. Hell for prolonged exposure if the company is not going through some agency it can be upwards of $20,000. If an agency is involved said agency tends to take a 90+% cut of the money and only give the creators a small amount of a few hundred to a few grand.

 

What BK did is forcibly advertise themselves basically for nothing. Exploiting content creators and using them as advertisers for their brand WITHOUT PROPER COMPENSATION. Not to mention IT DID NOT MENTION IT WAS AN AD. Which is an FTC Violation and can get these streamers into legal trouble that could end their career temporarily as they deal with the legal drawbacks. Luckily that didn't happen and BK/the Agency came out about it and will likely face FTC guidelines trouble for not discolosing what they were doing was an advertisement campaign when they did it and not informing said streamers of said campaign.

[mr moose]

9 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

 

The ads almost certainly violate various FTC disclosure regs regarding internet advertising. Depending on how much BK knew about the ad campaign before it began they may be on the hook as well.

 

4 minutes ago, AdmiralMeowmix said:

 

 

Issue: $5 is not worth advertising a company. A normal deal for advertising even just once is a few thousand dollars. Hell for prolonged exposure if the company is not going through some agency it can be upwards of $20,000. If an agency is involved said agency tends to take a 90+% cut of the money and only give the creators a small amount of a few hundred to a few grand.

 

What BK did is forcibly advertise themselves basically for nothing. Exploiting content creators and using them as advertisers for their brand WITHOUT PROPER COMPENSATION. Not to mention IT DID NOT MENTION IT WAS AN AD. Which is an FTC Violation and can get these streamers into legal trouble that could end their career temporarily as they deal with the legal drawbacks. Luckily that didn't happen and BK/the Agency came out about it and will likely face FTC guidelines trouble for not discolosing what they were doing was an advertisement campaign when they did it and not informing said streamers of said campaign.

 

It's still ingenious marketing.  and you'll probably find the FTC is full of loopholes as the laws on digital marketing and content are still largely built on yesterdays pen and paper realities.

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

 

It's still ingenious marketing.  and you'll probably find the FTC is full of loopholes as the laws on digital marketing and content are still largely built on yesterdays pen and paper realities.

It's likely that Twitch, or the streamers would have to bring the complaint against RBI (Restaurant Brands International), and something tells me that streamers don't have the time for it.

[mr moose]

Just now, Kisai said:

It's likely that Twitch, or the streamers would have to bring the complaint against RBI (Restaurant Brands International), and something tells me that streamers don't have the time for it.

A company makes a donation to a streamer and posts a ad on a public comments board in the process.  I can see more holes in that case than a catholic sanctioned condom.

[LAwLz]

Have to love the ingenuity of BK. I am surprised nobody thought of it sooner.