Blowing The Whistle On XB1M13, MS And Machinima's Covert Xbox One Campaign

[Machiavellian]

Scoobes said:

Machiavellian said:

Fusioncode said:

Machiavellian said:
So let me get this straight. MS paid to have a personality praise their product. Would this be any different if MS paid Tom Cruz to promote the X1. Am I missing something?

The difference being that people KNOW when a celebrity is endorsing a product. They wont have any idea that a youtuber is getting paid to say positive things about the XBO. 

I still see no difference. As the article stated, this is not something new where a company pay a YT celebrity for advertising.  Actually, the more I think about it, I really do not see any difference.  If a YT celebrity have a million people watching their content, that would make them a Celebrity.  If that person is willing to endorse a product for money, that YT person is no different than some basketball player, Movie star or anyone else who has a following that endorse a product for money.  I see people do this all the time with Twitter so I really cannot see a difference here.

 

If people are so gullible to purchase a product because some YT, Basketball Player or Movie star endorse the product then why has this become some big issue.

It's not quite the same thing though. Even those celebrities have to make public that they're endorsing an item and the fact they're getting paid is in the public domain.

In this case, the youtubers cannot reveal they're getting paid to endorse the X1. It's fine for them to get paid to endorse a product, but the fact they're getting paid to do so has to be revealed and publicly stated.

I just read the FTC act on endorsement and it does not state anything about celebrities having to make endorsing public.  The only thing the FTC act states is that the endorsement cannot contain any false or misleading information.  In other words if the person is publicly saying that the X1 does something, it has to be something it actually does and they have proof.  As long as the people who endorse the product was truthful in what they stated then there is nothing wrong or different from any other endorsement.

There is plenty of evidence of people endorsing a product even on twitter where a contract is not stated.  The only thing that would make this marketing venture by MS illegal or even unethical is if there were false or misinformation from people who endorse the product.