GCN is sponsored content. You can see the sponsor on their YouTube video although they didn’t use to list them.
Not everyone realizes that their reviews are ads. This happens a ton in cycling and I’m tempted to raise awareness of certain outlets/influencers doing this but I also don’t want everyone crying sour grapes.
As for a TR strategy, I don’t want to want us to pay for sponsorship if it’s not perfectly clear that we’re sponsoring the content.
That being said, we’ve done this twice before and it left a bad taste in my mouth. We did one engagement with GCN a long time ago and we’ve done another influencer campaign. We’ve stopped both and don’t plan to do any sponsorship where it’s not clear we’re a sponsor anymore.
I think the best thing you can do as a consumer is just ask the reviewer/outlet if they are getting paid by the company they are reviewing, either directly for the post or indirectly via sponsorship and ads.
Other hints are when a reviewer/outlet posts way too much about a particular brand or only posts nice things and defends the brand further than most people. They will usually do some small critiques that don’t really matter so they can point to it and say it’s not all good coverage, but it’s usually 99% positive and 1% negative.
One person that I know takes no money from anyone is DC Rainmaker. He won’t even let us comp him a TR account. Classy dude.
In fairness Nate, to your credit, I think enough people name drop TR as it is. Only last week Dave Brailsford mentioned it on the PYSO podcast.
When people clearly mention TR off their own back that will surely always mean and resonate more with potential subscribers. I’m not currently subscribed but I always want you guys to do well.
I love that you hold to the integrity of this so well. As an editor for a b2b pub about water and wastewater, I feel almost all the companies I deal with want to constantly buy editorial space from us. They have this “if you write about us, we should get approval before publishing” attitude, and it’s always irks me that they don’t see the forest for the trees with that mindset.
I find myself pushing back on stuff like that a lot, especially when something was submitted as pure editorial and very clearly was marketing and advertising copy ( “this unique product,” “better than traditional options,” “superior construction,” etc.).
Kudos @Nate_Pearson, I think I had a run-in with one of those “influencers” last year.
They posted that they were diving straight into either a Build or Speciality phase and when I suggested they try a full BBS cycle and pointed them towards the forum for additional tips and tricks was quickly swamped by their friends accusing me of “mansplaining” and being very negative toward me. I have to say that the community here is so supportive of each other (led by your ground rules, which I try to follow on all social media btw) I was quite taken aback by the whole affair.
Keep TR doing TR and let the quality of the core team and product shine through!
Totally agreed.
I think most people are tired of subtle-but-not-so-subtle product placements where contestants in a cooking competition say they “hopped into they Hyundai Alantras” (made the model up) to buy food. I’d much rather they tell me straight that one part of the program is a commercial. For example, IMHO GCN’s 1x video on road bikes was quite successful in this regard: yes, SRAM helped create this video, but the rest of the video was mostly about gear ratios and gear ranges.
Honestly, I like the GCN best that was produced by people who love riding bikes for people who love riding bikes. Well, just like the TrainerRoad podcast
Canyon comes to mind with GCN… Sure, its a global program, but they beat the hell out of their subscribers with Canyon content for the better part of a year.
GTFO with that nonsense handle-bar. A “solution” in search of a problem.
I agree, so much of cycling “journalism” is paid advertisement of cycling products that until one become attuned to the nonsense, it can be confusing, and after one becomes attuned, it can be discouraging.
You got anymore of that first person race footage? Kinda need something for the trainer time… [rubs inner arm like a Dave Chappell Skit].
I used to watch and look forward to every GCN episode, not so much these days, but still watch content I might find interesting. Agree it’s not the same since Matt left. I do think Manon is a breath of fresh air for the channel though.
Another thing to remember about these channels is that the personalities you see on screen are not the ones making editorial decisions, they are employees.
GCN is run by a company called Play Sports Network and their website is actually very interesting. The whole thing is an exercise in marketing.
GCN interestingly addressed the removal of the FTP Test video at the end of the GCN Show today. It was certainly mentioned in a rather diplomatic manner - words to the effect of ‘we took it down in response to some comments from our viewers that thought we had left out some important details…’
She lives in Switzerland and my wife wanted to talk to her about GCN. Emma did not even want to comment and said its all fake. Also heard that from other people. I experience Emma as a person with very high integrity without knowing her personally. I can only hypothesize that she didn’t like how GCN operates as discussed here…
Even though “we all want to know”, and while some of us expect drama, the reasons may actually be quite mundane. Keeping quiet is certainly the professional thing to do. And who knows what the reasons actually are? Perhaps she has a significant other who lives in Switzerland, and filming in England puts undue strain on their relationship. This is pure speculation my part, but very often the reasons for such decisions are much more mundane.
With the extent of ‘native advertisements’ these days on youtube, my working assumption is that every product used in a video is some king of product placement, unless there is specific significant evidence to the contrary.
With GCN, I consider everything an advertisement. I think there is a lot of evidence to support this view, and very little to go against it.
Agreed! Streaming the races without a subscription requirement and JPows on the commentary was excellent.
I follow their GCN Racing channel but don’t have a lot of interest in the other stuff they do. Happy to ignore some content that isn’t my thing in exchange for quality race coverage of races that NBC Gold doesn’t broadcast.
