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Don’t worry about YouTube creators trashing your brand – they won’t, says P&G marketer

La Brooy

La Brooy

A Singapore-based head of content at Procter & Gamble said today that companies shouldn’t worry about the YouTube content creators they work being critical of their brands, because it rarely if ever happens.

Stuart Labrooy, global brand manager, content and collaboration, for P&G’s SK-II beauty brand, was asked at Ad:tech Asean what advice he’d give to companies whose brands are trashed by the celebrity video bloggers they’ve paid as endorsers after giving them complete editorial freedom. He said: “It doesn’t tend to happen.”

“If they want to hate on your product they’ll do it anyway, whether they’re working with you or not,” he told his audience in Singapore.

“But working with them will help,” said Labrooy, who advised brands to engage in a close dialogue with YouTubers, explain in depth about the product and in a way they can relate to.

“If they’re in a partnership with you – well, creators don’t want to ruin that relationship,” he added.

In any case, consumers are interested in the best products, not the worst – so creators are less likely to talk negatively about a brand on their platform, Labrooy said.

The P&G marketer was awarded by Marketing Magazine earlier this year for best use of bloggers for SK-II’s ‘Beauty Circle’ idea. The collaboration with a top beauty blogger in Japan generated 129 million impressions in three days.

“We promised them that when you work with us, we’ll never tell you what you can and can’t say. It’s a partnership not a sponsorship,” he said.

The right brand-blogger partnership is different from the “pay or pray model,” he said.

“Bloggers want to grow their audience and improve their offering too. They are always ways you can incentivise bloggers to work and partner with you.”

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