Burger King "King of Stream" Twitch Donation Controversy

Submission 9,689

Part of a series on Burger King. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Burger King "King of Stream" Twitch Donation Controversy refers to an online backlash toward a campaign orchestrated by the advertising agency Ogilvy for the fast-food chain Burger King, which sent up to $5 to Twitch streamers that use text-speech programs to read donation messages.

Background

On August 18th, 2020, the @Oglivy tweeted a video about their "King of Stream" campaign, which featured clips of Twitch streams that included their donation messages (shown below). Within 72 hours, the video accumulated more than 1.1 million views, 2,700 retweets and 1,800 likes.

Title: The King of StreamClient: Burger KingTeam: weareDAVIDmad</a> Burger King turned Twitch's donation feature into a marketing campaign. Check out more <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClientWork?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClientWork</a>, here: <a href="https://t.co/F7JV9RUakK">https://t.co/F7JV9RUakK</a> <a href="https://t.co/KUhtxctwhu">pic.twitter.com/KUhtxctwhu</a>— Ogilvy (Ogilvy) August 18, 2020

Developments

In response to the Ogilvy tweet, streamer Anne Munition tweeted^[1] "I really despise when companies take advantage of my live content in order to push their ads" (shown below, left). Echoing the sentiment, streamer Cohh Carnage tweeted^[2] that the campaign was "exceptionally low class" (shown below, right).

Anne Munition @AnneMunition Replying to @Ogilvy and @weareDAVIDmad I really despise when companies take advantage of my live content in order to push their ads without clearing it with me first or offering what I should be paid for the marketing, which is more than $5 I'm pretty sure. I encourage other companies not to be like this one. 7:16 PM - Aug 19, 2020 · Twitter Web App

Cohh Carnage @CohhCarnage Replying to @Ogilvy and @weareDAVIDmad This is exceptionally low class. Taking advantage of a system meant to support these streamers, utilizing it for big-name companies that could easily afford to do it properly and then bragging about it? Predatory marketing. Cool. 6:15 PM · Aug 19, 2020 · Twitter for Android

On August 20th, YouTuber YellowFlash 2 uploaded a video about the controversy titled "Twitch Streamers Are Furious With Burger King! Demand to Have it Their Way!" (shown below).

On August 21st, YouTuber Keemstar tweeted a video in which he attempted to promote Burger King on Twitch streams without donating any money (shown below).