The Rise and Fall of partners.vice.com
VICE is no longer putting corporate partnerships in one place.
June 2016, I published a deep dive into the clever (and probably illegal) ways Vice disguises advertising as news. How Vice rejects or alters stories critical to brands. About three months after my post, Vice launched a new site partners.vice.com that **appeared to** put the branded content / native advertising all in one place. Now, partners.vice.com appears to be dead.
It’s been about five months since its passing so I figure it deserves a postmortem.
How Successful? Not Very.
My analysis of 1300 tweets linking to 145 partnerships showed that Vice had little success — with one exception. The day before national women’s day 2017, Vice launched the Smirnoff Equalizing Music campaign. A call-to-action to double the number of female headliners at music festivals. This pseudo-grassroots initiative resulted in just over a hundred tweets. The remaining campaigns averaged about 8 tweets.
In most cases, Vice used its propriety video player which obfuscates view counts but not always. In one case, Vice embedded Vimeo and the results were as expected: between 191 and 929 plays for an advertorial cooking/travel show.
Only 191 plays for ep. 3? Having watched this advertorial I can say I’ve contributed to 0.5% of the viewership. I almost feel bad. Click here to watch it yourself.
Blending In
The FTCs Guide for Businesses states that there needs to be clear and prominent disclosure in native advertising. For awhile, partners.vice.com was pretty good at that.
The website background was different and a typical page had clear and prominent disclosure of “PARTNER CONTENT”.
Now, branded content gets posted directly on the Vice vertical with only a small “CREATED WITH” in font matching standard new articles. (This small disclosure only occurs when the partner doesn’t receive preferred treatment)
Vice, the not-growing media company is back to the same old shit.
Conflicts of Interest
partners.vice.com redirects to vice.com. Since Vice staff seem to be allergic to disclosure, here is a list of brands that appeared between 2016 and 2018. (spreadsheet here)
2016: (Sep 2016) Nando’s UK, Geico (car insurance), Oscar (health insurance), Dove (soap), LG (electronics).
2017: POP TV (streaming), SlimJim (food), Ford (cars), Mail Chimp (marketing), Halo (game), Skull Island, Smirnoff (alcohol), NikeSB, Peroni, Diesel, Sony, Sloggi (clothing), Candores (alcohol), VisitDenmark (tourism), firstdirect HSBC (bank), Buxton (water), Belvedere (alcohol), Adidas (clothing), Farah (clothing), Geico (car insurance), Lululemon (clothing), Desperados (beer), Adidas (clothing), Jameson (alcohol), TourismAustralia, Tropicana (food), Power Starz (TV), Western Union (banking), SK-II, Final Fantasy XIV (game), Mariott (hotel), Ford Fiesta (car), Samsung Galaxy 8 (phone), Honor for the Brave (game), Sprite (food), Huawei (phone), Cuervo (alcohol), Melissa (clothing), Hellman’s (food), Sutter Health (health insurance), Intel, American Eagle (clothing), Dewars (alcohol), Birth of the Dragon, Sky Atlantic, Zealando, Tuborg Open, Syfy (TV), Colgate, Aerie (clothing), Canal+ (TV), Kari-traa, Hackspace Capital (investment), YSL (clothing), Nike Cortez (clothing), Sky Vodka, Uniqlo (clothing), Fourty Five Ten (clothing), Hennesey (alcohol), Smile Direct (dentistry), Zadig Voltaire (clothing), Swell (water), Cadillac (car), Secret, BMW Mini (car), Stichting Bloemenbureau Holland, Be Brazil, Addition elle (clothing), Jack in the Box (fast food), Bose (Speakers), Liberte, Loewe, JP Morgan Chase (investment), Bacardi (alcohol), Seatarona, Nikon Film Fest, Casadores (alcohol), Nissan (car), Nqer Media, Boucheron Paris, Star Wars Last Jedi, Jonnie Walker (alcohol), Absolut (alcohol), Barclays (banking), Next Wave Soundcloud (music fest), Sky Brittania, Ally (bank), Foot Locker.
2018: Skyy Vodka, Just Eat, Mercedes Benz (car), eni gaseluce, pierre-et-vacances (tourism), BBC, Ralph Lauren (clothing), Sony, Diesel (clothing), Showtime (TV), Zalando, Secret, Ey, ABB Formula E, ASOS, Gucci Guilty (clothing), Mega Image (supermarket), McMafia AMC (TV), Volkswagon (car), Samsung Pay, Vans (clothing), Buchmills (alcohol), Gap (clothing), Red Sparrow (movie), Crackle (streaming), ile do France, Australia Outback (tourism), Evian, Bavaria, Vanden Borre, Gucci Bloom (clothing), New Balance (clothing), Audible (streaming), Adidas (clothing), Basics I move me (clothing), Telekom, IKEA, Sprint, UBS, CRDIF, Levis, Estacio, Mountain Dew, Me by Melia, Travel Portland, Gilette, Lufthansa, BMW, EDF Pulse, (Sep 2018) Fiat (car)
Preferred Treatment for the Saudis
The above list is by no means complete. One notable partnership that’s missing is the March 2018 production between Vice and the Saudi Research and Marketing Group about camel racing. Despite a dozen brands publishing on partners.vice.com that month, the Saudis appear to have gotten preferred treatment. The website contains no disclosure and the only indication comes in the form of a four second title card at the very end of the video.
Oddly, the filmmakers and the host, Charlet Duboc, didn’t even put her name on the production. She did not respond to a request for comment over twitter.
Vice told The Guardian they had full editorial control but this is hard to believe. In 2014, the Charlet Duboc made a similar documentary about a camel beauty contest but featured Saudis spinning guns to rap music and an old man comparing women to camels. This was before the Saudi-led war Yemen.
“Women are not all the same” the unidentified Saudi says “some men like them with not a lot of meat on them” the small crowd laughs and the old man points to the host “She is nice”. The host, seemingly after translation, says “I’m not as beautiful as the camels”.
Two weeks after the March 20th 2018 Saudi marketing video aired, Shane Smith had dinner with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman — fresh off a kidnapping spree in his native Riyadh.
UPDATE (Feb 8 2019): WSJ reports Shane Smith and Mohammed Bin Salman went yachting together five months later. “Prince Khalid initiated his brother’s meeting on the yacht last year, believing Vice, in partnership with SRMG, could speak to young Saudis more attracted to online platform…”
VICE: Still Helping Give People Cancer?
In March 2016, Financial Times reported a deal between Vice and Philip Morris (the maker of Marlboro cigarettes) to produce “white label content” (an industry term for stuff that will not have Vice’s logo in it). The company producing it is Edition Worldwide which is controlled and owned by Vice.
So far, Vice has not disclosed this partnership on their website and no articles mentioning “Philip Morris” contain disclosure. This is because Vice, unlike most, has no published code of ethics.
If you work for Vice or Philip Morris and have a conscience, feel free to contact me. I would love to know what videos were made and you can remain anonymous. I can be reached through Twitter, email and cell (top image of my website). I’m also on Signal.
(Correction: An earlier version contained a typo saying Charlet Duboc did respond to a request for comment – linking to a tweet where she did not respond. Charlet is a hapless Saudi pawn, I regret suggesting otherwise.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL VOSHART Works in architecture and virtual reality. He writes in his spare time and occasionally does forensic video consultation.
not vice is media criticism blog about Vice Media. It started in 2015 as research for a book and later mutated into a blog. notvice is hosted on Medium.
