Why creators should never take anything for granted

Is trouble afoot?

I won’t publicly name the brand that inspired this newsletter for two reasons. Firstly, I’m not interested in burning bridges, and, secondly, I don’t have all of the facts to hand, therefore it would be unfair of me to cast aspersions.

However, something is changing within a segment of the tech review space, and it has caused a right old stink behind the scenes. It also confirms something I’ve suspected for quite some time.

You should never take anything for granted in this game.

Every content niche is different, but when it comes to reviewing new tech products and gadgets, timing is everything. The earlier you can get your hands on a new thing and put it in front of your audience, the bigger and more engaged that audience is likely to be.

We struggle with this regularly. There are several brands to whose press briefings I’m regularly invited and whose new products are sent to us under embargo (which essentially means I agree not to talk about them publicly until a certain date and time). It’s a privileged position to be in, but also one that is thoroughly deserved if you’ve proved that you can command an audience. Manufacturers and brands want that attention, after all, and one of the best ways to gain it is to ensure the people who have painstakingly built those audiences have product access as early as possible.

It’s a no-brainer when you think about it, isn’t it? I’d also forgive you for thinking that once you’re ‘in’, you’re ‘in’.

Not so. I’ve heard countless tales from other creators who have spent years on the seeding lists for new devices from particular brands only to not receive the invite to the next launch party or not have anything drop through their letterbox in time with everyone else. It’s happened to me, too - I’ve been invited to fully-expensed foreign press trips only to never receive the product we were shown or miss out on invites to future press launches, despite fully covering the previous one and directing a sizeable audience to it.

I completely understand why some find this part of the tech review space highly questionable. Looking in from afar, it might seem that I’m simply moaning about missing out on the free business class flight and champagne on arrival. Or I just want to get my greasy hands on new stuff before anyone else. I don’t doubt that some of the people with whom I’ve rubbed shoulders at such events are in it purely for those reasons (in fact, I’m pretty sure they are) but most of us have one thing firmly in mind - maintaining that flow of clicks and attention for our businesses. Whether I’m handed a new product in Italy or witness it dropping through my letterbox on a miserable Monday morning, what matters is that I get it in time and have the chance to show my audience what it’s all about as early as possible.

So, what happens when that access disappears without warning? That’s what has happened recently for a huge number of tech reviewers and influencers. No special box in the post. No event invite. And, to compound matters, the dawning realisation that some of your contemporaries have received stuff and are on their way to foreign climes for a big launch event. I won’t lie - it’s hugely frustrating; it makes you wonder what on earth you did wrong. And it isn’t long before the mild panic sets in once you realise that you’re going to be late with your content on that brand-new thing.

The problem is that there is an enormous sense of entitlement going on here. Brands have no requirement to invite anyone to an event, nor do they have any kind of responsibility to send out their new products ahead of time. It’s totally up to them how they run their release schedules, product seeding, and marketing campaigns. It’s why, whenever I receive an invite or a product pre-release, I never take it for granted. I’m just a bloke from Northampton who has somehow managed to build an audience for his tech reviews; I’m not known within the upper echelons of these tech businesses, and my presence within seeding lists and event invites is probably nothing more than an entry on a spreadsheet.

The challenge arises when you start thinking about why access is removed. Once again, I’ve heard all sorts of stories from brands responding poorly to negative reviews, to PR companies having no choice but to remove people from event lists due to their ‘behaviour’. The reality is that no one outside of the inner circles that make these decisions knows what’s going on or why those decisions are being made. We can pontificate until the cows come home, but we’ll never get to the bottom of it. It’s wasted energy.

My hunch is that it all centres around marketing strategies. There appears to be a swing towards lifestyle creators in tech, where those who have built audiences by showing off lavish lifestyles are being favoured by tech companies for product seeding. And who can blame those tech companies? If you had the choice of sending a new device to a tech reviewer who will critique it versus an influencer who will show themselves jumping into their Porsche while using it and have that image appear in front of several million impressionable followers, which would you go for?

The good news is that the decisions made by these brands don’t remove the audiences from those who were once in favour. It’s our job to continue serving those audiences - however we decide to. That’s what I’m personally focused on at the moment and, if you’ve been rather perturbed by recent events I’d advise you to do the same.