Burger King Brags About Exploiting Twitch To Advertise To Kids For Cheap (arstechnica.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this week, an advertising agency emerged with a video bragging about an ad-campaign concept: We'll invade gaming-filled Twitch chat rooms and post ads for your brand for cheap. The attached video was exactly the kind of cringe you might expect from "brand engages with video game culture," with edgy yet inoffensive quotes, footage of fake games, and digitally altered voices. But what looked like a fake ad concept has turned out to be very real -- and after examining how Twitch works, the whole thing looks like a possible FTC violation.
The ad campaign, run by the Ogilvy agency on behalf of Burger King, relied on a common Twitch trope of donating to game-streaming hosts. "Affiliate" Twitch users are eligible to receive cash from viewers, either in the form of flat-rate subscriptions or variable one-time donations, and hosts often encourage this by adding text-to-voice automation to the process. So if you pay a certain amount, a voice will read your statement out loud -- and hosts usually retroactively react to weird and offensive statements made by these systems instead of pre-screening them. (They're busy playing a game, after all.) Ogilvy's promotion revolved around the low cost of entry for these text-to-voice prompts. Their ads, written to promote a fast-food chain, were attached to specific dollar amounts. One example, as explained by Twitch streamer Ross "RubberNinja" O'Donovan (not to be confused with that other Ninja), went as follows: "I just donated $5 to tell you that you can spend $5 and get [a combined meal on our app]. It seems like a twisted strategy." O'Donovan went on to post his disdain for American fast food and compared it to what he ate when he lived in Australia, which prompted Ogilvy's "THE_KING_OF_STREAM" account to donate another $5 and make a joke about Australian food. Ogilvy had described the ad campaign as run by a "bot," implying automation, but O'Donovan's example implies some form of human control and curation in terms of reacting to Twitch host pushback.
In a Thursday report, Kotaku's Nathan Grayson went sniffing around to discover many other examples of Ogilvy's ads playing out on real Twitch channels over the course of the week -- and the Kotaku report quoted pretty much all of those hosts decrying this practice. [...] More crucially for Ogilvy and Burger King, however, is the matter of how those ads appeared: as sneaky "fan" declarations in chat rooms. Though the campaign was largely run by the aforementioned "THE_KING_OF_STREAM" account and appeared as such in Twitch chat rooms, it wasn't in any way represented by Twitch as a sponsor's account, nor were the posts labeled as "#ad" or other clear markings. As O'Donovan and other streamers have made clear, that kind of transparency would have gotten such chat statements instantly deleted or modded for violating individual channel rules. While the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has clear guidance about "deceptive" online advertising, and it demands that channel hosts comply with FTC guidance to make sure sponsored statements are easily identified, Ogilvy may have slipped through the FTC's current guidance cracks.
The ad campaign, run by the Ogilvy agency on behalf of Burger King, relied on a common Twitch trope of donating to game-streaming hosts. "Affiliate" Twitch users are eligible to receive cash from viewers, either in the form of flat-rate subscriptions or variable one-time donations, and hosts often encourage this by adding text-to-voice automation to the process. So if you pay a certain amount, a voice will read your statement out loud -- and hosts usually retroactively react to weird and offensive statements made by these systems instead of pre-screening them. (They're busy playing a game, after all.) Ogilvy's promotion revolved around the low cost of entry for these text-to-voice prompts. Their ads, written to promote a fast-food chain, were attached to specific dollar amounts. One example, as explained by Twitch streamer Ross "RubberNinja" O'Donovan (not to be confused with that other Ninja), went as follows: "I just donated $5 to tell you that you can spend $5 and get [a combined meal on our app]. It seems like a twisted strategy." O'Donovan went on to post his disdain for American fast food and compared it to what he ate when he lived in Australia, which prompted Ogilvy's "THE_KING_OF_STREAM" account to donate another $5 and make a joke about Australian food. Ogilvy had described the ad campaign as run by a "bot," implying automation, but O'Donovan's example implies some form of human control and curation in terms of reacting to Twitch host pushback.
In a Thursday report, Kotaku's Nathan Grayson went sniffing around to discover many other examples of Ogilvy's ads playing out on real Twitch channels over the course of the week -- and the Kotaku report quoted pretty much all of those hosts decrying this practice. [...] More crucially for Ogilvy and Burger King, however, is the matter of how those ads appeared: as sneaky "fan" declarations in chat rooms. Though the campaign was largely run by the aforementioned "THE_KING_OF_STREAM" account and appeared as such in Twitch chat rooms, it wasn't in any way represented by Twitch as a sponsor's account, nor were the posts labeled as "#ad" or other clear markings. As O'Donovan and other streamers have made clear, that kind of transparency would have gotten such chat statements instantly deleted or modded for violating individual channel rules. While the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has clear guidance about "deceptive" online advertising, and it demands that channel hosts comply with FTC guidance to make sure sponsored statements are easily identified, Ogilvy may have slipped through the FTC's current guidance cracks.
oh noes, advertising to kids (Score:1, Offtopic)
good or bad, advertising to kids has been going on for a long time in the USA, since 19th century comic books.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:oh noes, advertising to kids (Score:4, Insightful)
And that was just the cartoons, the ads in between them were even worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As for TFA? You don't really need to advertise to get kids to eat shitty fried foods, anybody who saw that chef make pink slime chicken nuggets and all the kids were more than happy to gobble them up? Yeah...if you fry it or cover it with sugar kids will happily line up to gobble down anything.
I don't see what's wrong with this. They're literally making use of the entire chicken rather than throwing out a big part of it just because part of the process merely looks offensive, and isn't inherently bad for you. Really the only bad thing about it is using corn starch to bread it and sunflower oil to fry it, but that has nothing to do with the "pink slime" aspect, which is really what troubles the audience (and you, apparently.) Stupid shows like the one you're referencing just encourage throw-away c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, yes, those Saturday morning cartoons I used to envy because we never had anything like that in the Netherlands. While all those American children could just get up and zonk out in front of the telly with some oversweetened cereal and binge watch cartoons we Dutch kids were treated to... nothing, really. Which made us do other things... which I later realised was a far more sensible approach but at that time it just felt boring compared to the American way. It probably helped that I grew up in the 70's a
Re: (Score:2)
you missed out? if your childhood was late 60s to 1970 around Chicago there were some doozy riots.
Re: (Score:2)
Where I grew up, Saturday mornings were not for kids, what you got there was "TV school". Mostly language lessons, from English to French to Italian and even Latin. My elementary teacher went near crazy 'cause I insisted in writing Ns and Rs in reverse 'cause that's how they did it in the Russian language TV show, and I liked that a lot better.
These streamers were SO OUTRAGED... (Score:1)
...that they kept the donated money.
Iâ(TM)M SHOCKED! (Score:1)
Fast food places advertising to kids? Why itâ(TM)s simply SHOCKING!
Re:Iâ(TM)M SHOCKED! (Score:4, Insightful)
They are not advertising to children. You have to look at the way the entire content of the advertisement is crafted. They are not advertising a product when they target children like that, they are psychologically manipulating them to tie the junk food to having fun, taking it from eating something to end hunger, to eating for fun to be happy, a real genuine manipulation that will harm those children for the rest of their lives, as adults, that eating is fun and you must do it as much as possible and look at the results.
Targeting children with psychological messaging to alter their connection to food permanently, to take from eating to fill an empty stomach, to eating for fun, a gauranteed path to obesitity and maximising junk food profits. They are targeting those children for the rest of their lives with those ads and should be criminally punished for the psychological harm they are causing. Keep in mind marketing people are trained in psychology and many have doctorates, it's how you get the big bucks, scamming people psychological to spend big whilst harming themselves in the process.
If it did not work, they psychological manipulations, they would not spend BILLIONS doing it. It has to stop, advertising has to be limited and censored, all content vetted for truth prior to be broadcast in any manner. Failure to show that you ad was checked for truth and authenticity and accuracy, with zero false claims, earns a custodial sentence for all those involved. They have proven they can not be trusted.
Re: (Score:1)
Have I Been Pwned (Score:1)
Why would it be illegal? (Score:1)
How would it be illegal?
"We left an unmoderated open mic open that anyone can pay to use, and people paid to use it and say things we didn't want them to say!"
Then maybe moderate it?
I know a lot of Twitch chat is heavily moderated with bots that are quick to permaban you from channels, generally run by people who have never heard of the Scunthorpe Problem. There are tools to resolve the problem. Use them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you read TFA you would see that it's illegal because *paid advertisements* have to be clearly recognizable as advertisements. It's illegal to pretend that you aren't advertising when you are.
Let me copy it for you:
More crucially for Ogilvy and Burger King, however, is the matter of how those ads appeared: as sneaky "fan" declarations in chat rooms. Though the campaign was largely run by the aforementioned "THE_KING_OF_STREAM" account and appeared as such in Twitch chat rooms, it wasn't in any way represented by Twitch as a sponsor's account, nor were the posts labeled as "#ad" or other clear markings.
Lying for financial purposes (in this case by misrepresenting the source as a "fan" and not a paid ad) has always been illegal on a commercial level.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you're making a motion picture, then you don't have to disclose a damn thing. E.T. phoned Reese's for some money that way. One thing you can always count on is that Hollywood Democrats have enough money to legalize or illegalize anything that benefits them.
I don't like ads, but.... (Score:2)
I really don't like ads, but for some reason I don't seem to mind many of the BKs ads. They seem to come up with a lot of hilarious, unorthodox (and sometime self deprecating) ways of promoting themselves. I have to admit I laughed quite a bit watching the video of those twitch ads. Their recent ad about the moldy whopper. Several years ago the youtube ads complaining about ads. I can at least appreciate their style. Kinda like superbowl ads (back when those were actually good).
Re: (Score:2)
I've been eating Whoppers every now and then for a few years because of their 2-for-1 coupons. (The main thing that keeps me coming back less often is that for some reason they don't take my Discover card, so I have to use cash.) Their advertising department has pretty good typographic taste, and they do seem to enjoy doing trollish things including stuff that looks like they've gone full retard woke, just for the hell of it.
But it's still hard to top the old King costume ads though, especially that Sneak
Re: (Score:2)
If you've been following the net neutrality debate at all, then this one is classic:
https://www.engadget.com/2018-... [engadget.com]
Everybody's talking about this B.S. (Score:2)
How Are Kids (Score:1)
Supposed to know what they want without advertising? Take suggestions from their parents? Ridiculous. The parents probably didn't even want the kids. I know mine didn't.
This is a stupid story and I want a BK burger for compensation.
not that there's a lot of burger kings here (Score:1)
They would use nicotine if they could (Score:2, Offtopic)
Corporate capitalists are like meth freaks with rabies. They will go to any lengths to MAKE MONEY!!! This is just one more case where they don't even blink over going after a vulnerable target group. No different then jacking up the price of insulin and putting patients lives and health at risk.
Until we recognize that capitalism inherently trends towards predatory behavior, we will
Digital corporate shill (Score:1)
Reality check. (Score:2)
Damnit, I’ve become a neckbeard. (Though I’m beardless.)
I got about 3 sentences in, realized I’ve never used Twitch, don’t give a damn about Twitch, or Burger King, and tapped out.
We built the Internet for porn; you young’uns turned it into something vile.
Wow (Score:2)
If they are going to pull this bullshit and
use fake games, they could have made the
games look like they weren't from 2005.
Also, maybe I'm not hip to todays gamer
culture, but this ad confused the fuck out
of me.