Can You Trust MKBHD?

[Music] it's up guest mkbhd here so I was on Twitter earlier just scrolling you know normal Twitter stuff and I saw a tweet from fellow youtuber super staff that really hit home you know in this world that we're in it said you say something positive about a product and those comments asking how much do they pay you but if you say something negative about that product they're asking how much did their competitor pay you can't win and so I chimed in also if you say nothing about a product they're asking you well why you ignoring it why you wait you hate them and it's obviously all you know poking fun but there is a hint of truth in it when you actually go through the youtube comment section which maybe you should never go through but when you go through them on tech videos you see that kind of stuff all the time so let's talk me and you the commenters let's talk about the actual ethics of being a tech reviewer on YouTube so the the backdrop to all this is this isn't the early days of YouTube anymore and there's always been you know these much longer more well-established industries that can be a part of you can work for The Times and the journals and the posts on the CNET's of the world but now there's a newer way to do it and that's why being an independent individual publisher on any number of platforms and one of the biggest happens to be by making videos here on YouTube actually remember not very long ago when it just wasn't like this at all you know when actually when I was in college studying business and marketing this wasn't even a real career path there was maybe like a single-digit number of humans on planet earth doing this for a living so it was kind of like the Wild West write your own rules do what you want to do but it's been slowly gaining respect and traction ever since then but because it's independent you kind of just are writing your own rules doing what you think is right hopefully well most of the time so in the United States we do have what's called the FTC the Federal Trade Commission and they do have rules and structures and even a written set of guidelines for social media marketing there's a whole PDF on their site you can read if you want to right now I'll link it below and most of the points are about disclosure so that customers know when they're being advertised to can't be shady or tricky about it customers deserve to know when they're looking at paid advertising and that's a that's a good cause right that's a cause I can get behind but I think a lot of us have noticed that these aren't really easily or well enforced and a lot of these companies if they didn't have to ever disclose that they were advertising they never would because they know nobody really likes advertising and they would all try to deceive you into thinking that you're watching something organic when it's really a paid ad now of course that shouldn't happen but this is an independent space and a lot of people don't really play exactly by the rules that the FTC is made take this one for example here's a post from a good friend Zach Jerry rigged everything on YouTube post it on Instagram with proper disclosure well done now here's a I think clearly an ad for the same thing from someone and be part of the Sam campaign but no disclosure of any kind from Shaq now I love Shaq but was that really like are we supposed to believe that that's not an from someone who we used to call the big diesel are we supposed to believe that ad for an electric truck was really just your words seriously it's pretty obvious not everyone's playing by the same rules so we're still trying to figure out how this is supposed to be how this should be done in 2020 and so I figured I should just tell you how I run things here on the mkbhd YouTube channel transparency actually I had a very recently mr. Mobile on the wave form podcast again I'll link that episode below where we talked about all this tech YouTube ethics stuff in much greater detail and I had him on because we line up on a lot of this ethic stuff he has a great ethics page but also at the end of his videos he has this little section in his reviews where he says this disclosure this review was produced following five days with a set of 20/20 pixel buds provided by Google I don't do paid reviews though the company paid no compensation for this coverage and also didn't get an early look or any copy approval rights concerning it that means Google is seeing this for the first time right alongside you and I was like oh that's good that's good and I'm watching this like me too of course but the fact that he has to say that I guess that means not everyone treats it the same way not everyone does it like that so for me for the mkbhd channel you should know one I have never and will never do paid reviews and two I have never and will never give a manufacturer an early look at a review before it goes live every time you see a review you're seeing it at the same time that manufacturer is seeing it too and I also want to be very clear about what exactly is a review like I think that word review gets thrown out there a little more loosely in some places so to me a tech review is an evaluation of a product to figure out if you should buy it or not so it'll have my experiences my opinions and my recommendations and that's what makes an mkbhd review so not every tech video is a review a sponsored video will also never be a review that would be more of like a product showcase essentially and it's funny people people love throwing out the word review oh there will be like a like a day one hands-on or first impressions of something like as soon as it comes out and there's always a comment like hey nice review that's not a review there's actually a playlist specifically of all the reviews on the channel and just for good measure I almost always have the word review in the title of reviews as well so if we're ever unsure if something is an mkbhd review or not because it wasn't in the title and it's not in the reviews playlist and I didn't say it was a review in the video it's because it's not a review another hard line for my channel is there will never be a product review sponsored by the company that makes that product never just not a good fit for me now that's not to say that no one can or should do this in fact there are plenty that do here's a good example Peter McKinnon just reviewed the canon r5 one of the earliest and best reviews of one of the most important new cameras and he has canon as a channel sponsor but he's obviously super upfront about that in the beginning of the video and he doesn't let it affect his review and he goes through the whole thing it's one of the best videos you should watch so it can be done well it's just for me in tech that's a tough distinction to make so that's not something that I'll do on this channel now all that being said that doesn't mean I'll never do anything sponsored of course I've partnered with brands before and these are sort of a necessary thing as I'll explain but just business-wise you'll never hear of a business relying entirely on like something like Adsense revenue as as a variable so to break it down there are two ways that I work with companies there are sponsored segments and collaborations with brands so a sponsored message it's pretty simple you're probably familiar with it by now we'll hear something like this video is sponsored by or this portion of the video is brought to you by or you can pick it up at our channel sponsor deeper and something like that that is a paid for message by a hand-selected sponsor who we to make something that I believe in or that I think is good that will always be disclosed aim I've actually seen recently YouTube has decided in like the next month or so to automatically enable mid rolls on all monetize videos over eight minutes and should just like try to decide where the mid roll should go you've seen those like mid-roll interruptions before I don't like that very much I don't enable mid rolls on very many of my own ten-minute videos so I do think the hand-selected sponsored message that you can integrate much more easily and much more seamlessly is a better way of doing that so I don't typically have mid rolls in my videos and I would rather go with the actual sponsored message and then a brand collaboration is a little bit more nebulous I'd classify it as any time a video wouldn't be possible without the cooperation of some company so whether it's a dope tech video on-camera robots where the company that makes them invited us out to their studio in Portland we fly out there we play with those crazy machines for a day or two and record it or when I got to sit down and talk tech in apparel with the legend Kobe Bryant thanks to partnering with Nike on his new shoe launch or even just a smart phone company sending a phone to the studio two weeks early for me to check it out and get some daily use in to make a launch day review these are all kind of brand collaborations in some way to make those videos possible but importantly know of them are paid but I actually think these can usually make some of the best videos just by enabling things that wouldn't be possible like how else would a nervous college kid interview Kobe Bryant or how else would I get you know to interview people who are behind the scenes that making products or to get a sneak peek in things that haven't come out yet all this stuff usually makes like the more fun interesting videos it is my policy on this channel to keep those unpaid not everybody does that and that's fine as long as those are disclosed but now you know my policy on that too I have done one fully sponsored entire video in the history of the channel you probably remember the Buick video I had never done a fully sponsored video before in over eleven years and in over a thousand videos and we learned a lot from that experience and its pros and cons I'm not against them actually I just think they are typically more difficult to execute well so to go back to that super staff tweet at the beginning if I ever say something positive about a product in a video it's because I genuinely think it's good and if I say something bad about a product it's because I genuinely think it's bad I have absolutely no concern about my relationship with a company changing because of something I say in a review because I plan on saying the truth every time so if a company gets mad or doesn't want to send review devices anymore or or invite me to events whatever it is because of what I said in a review because of a truth that I spoke about their product it actually looks worse on them we are very fortunate as a channel not to be in a position where we rely on having to be first to make it worth making a video typically which basically means if there's a product that doesn't get sent to the studio for an advanced review like and this happens all the time like there's Plex you guys asked about I'm still trying to get my hands on like Sony's Xperia 1 mark 2 Canon r5 like if I don't get them early I buy them and then I review them when they get here one thing I do want to be more clear about is disclosing when a product being reviewed was provided by the company that makes it versus one that I purchase myself it's a pretty healthy mix on the channel a lot of people don't realize that but I used to put that in the description of every review and I'd stop for a while I plan on bringing that back so you can accuse me of being biased sure you know all of us reviewers we have our preferences and basically you can calibrate yourself to all of our preferences but what you can't accuse me of as being paid off for a positive review because at the end of the day whether I say a positive or a negative thing about the product that's just me keeping it real oh and for the whole like if you say nothing then people ask well why do you hate them so much and not talk about them that whole thing and it's like we have to pick and choose our battles over here man like I wish I could make a whole new video every single day because sometimes there is that much to talk about but it's a small team here actually during the pandemic it's a kind of the solo mission but it's a small team it's we're based in the US so typically I'm able to get my hands on products that are available here and then generally I'm just hopping around focusing on things that I'm enthusiastic about that's what makes the videos fun that's what makes them interesting and I think if I try to review everything that would kind of take away from that so can you trust mkbhd can you trust me I hope so but I believe it is an important question to ask because you at the end of the day as a viewer shouldn't get all of your tech advice from one person I mean think about it it's a purchase decision should you should experiment with other opinions and there's a variety of us out there all of which have different preferences and different ethics stances so as a viewer or that commenter on YouTube you should be able to pick and choose and the reason I'm telling you all this is because I think it's important for you to know as a viewer and I work for you at the end of the day I think the tweets and comments and stuff like from the beginning of the video generally just come from a misunderstanding or a lack of understanding because this is so new and it has been the Wild West for so long so hopefully this public facing statement the series of statements can help you understand that better and help build that trust more so now you know how we run things here but hey if you still have questions because at the end of the day this is just me answering what I think you should know but if you have other questions hit me up in the comment section below ask me anything or I'm also gonna be doing an AMA on reddit starting today I think it's 8 p.m. Eastern I'll leave a link below again ask me anything it's an open book we can talk about it and hopefully this lets you trust me a little more either way that's been it a little different video but thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 3,993,298

Rating: 4.9416223 out of 5

Keywords: can you trust MKBHD, Can you trust, MKBHD videos, ethics statement, tech review ethics, tech reviewer, MKBHD, advertising disclosure, sponsors, sponsorships, brand partnerships, brands, MKBHD sponsors, advertising, paid, dbrand, channel sponsor, integrations, integrity, rules

Id: 5nLWTVTwOhY

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020