I don’t see it as a game of one-upping. An influencer getting free merchandise with absolutely no guarantee of revenue is a loss for the producer if there’s no revenue guaranteed. The producer reimbursing after revenue is gained isn’t one-upping them, it’s a business agreement that protects their business. I think it’s absolutely proper to offer a counter in a business agreement, that’s how any business operates. Add on to that that OOP is likely a one person operated small business, as opposed to like Nike or CoverGirl who already have enough revenue to cover a handful of losses, and you get an absolutely rational proposal to stay solvent and end with either a win for both parties or a loss on the part of the salesperson who couldn’t do their job–which is to sell.
ETA: My boyfriend, who is an independent photographer and video producer, absolutely eviscerated me for this argument lol.
How stupid to you have to be to have it spelled out for you and still not get the point? Maybe if you spent less time eating your crayons and more time using them you’d be able to keep up.
What? I just explained that linking coupon to someone is not that hard from technical standpoint. Yes it’s a marketing, but I don’t think I mentioned that?
Actual marketer here. It's pretty easy to fudge the results no matter what promo code you give the influencer.
In the case of an online store like this, the store itself will have accurate records of coupon code usage. However, unless you also issue backoffice accounts to the influencer for viewing reports or have a proper affiliate system, reports are usually issued in pdf or some other document format. You can just say whatever you want in those.
Hence why it's a total "trust me bro" move. There is no way for the influencer to personally verify the numbers. Well, I guess unless you specifically make those purchases yourself.
The scheme we see here definitely reeks of the "nope you didn't hit the quota" excuse down the line.
That’s on seller side though? they can track if the coupon is used or not. Your description is not technical side, right? Doesn’t matter if the store honest or not, they can know
Then buy the merch like normal human being. If they wanna get my thing for free to review they better let me curate whatever heck they were saying then call it an ad than review.
If you buy a product and pay full price for it, that’s a fair exchange.
If you get the product free, promote the product and bring more sales to the business, that’s a fair exchange too.
What isn’t a fair exchange is if you get the product for free by promising to promote it and then your promotion doesn’t bring sales to the business. You got a free product, the business lost a product and your promotion was worthless. This specific scenario is what the coupon code thing prevents, and the fact that influencers don’t sign up for it means that they’re knowingly promising something they won’t deliver to try and get free stuff.
Lying for financial gain is called ‘fraud’, incidentally.
When I released a game on Steam, I’ve had at least one youtuber offer to promote it for only $2000.
I politely declined, but I’m thinking, dude, the game’s only $2 and I sold maybe 200 copies. I’m not dropping 2 grand on what I’m 90% certain is a scam.
there was one cycling channel recently that was victim to a fraud attempt where someone pretending to be them reached out to a bike frame manufacturer requesting a frame to review, they wound up doing a sting on the fraudster. it was a pretty elaborate setup too, they did their homework
That sounds like Unbox Therapy. His vids were always straightforward but entertaining and he seemed to bring up criticisms when they were valid. Then, it seemed like suddenly his production value skyrocketed and at the same time, he never had anything critical to say about whatever product he was unboxing.
I gave it a few months but eventually unsubbed and haven’t thought about the channel for a couple years until just now. Not really interested in checking it out again, though.
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