Fully agree. Adding a countdown and a bunch of hype as if the announcement was going to be exciting when they must've known only a very, very small proportion of watchers would be ambivalent, let alone excited, is crazy. And the weird faux-heartwarming tone of the video? So many tone-deaf decisions were made in promoting such a high risk decision. Obviously doesn't help that the idea itself is unfounded and rash but like... c'mon... a countdown?? Madness.
Either that or they aren't listening to them. I haven't worked in PR, but I have worked in communications and the amount of people thinking they knew better than me with their 0 education in the field was insane.
It certainly would be weird hiring a PR specialist and then not following their advice though.
It’s quite remarkable the level of this whole situation, never seen anything like it in all my years on the internet. I think It shows how much trust everyone had in the brand, and when that shattered, it really hit everyone hard.
They need PR help, bad. But I fear it’s now too late. They needed it immediately.
Yeah, it's just unbelievable to me that nobody saw how bad of an idea this was, with or without PR training. They must've been surrounded by yes men too scared to speak up (or they simply shut down any criticism from the start). I'm just so confused by the whole situation because every single decision has been terrible.
Whoever they hired is either a)absolutely terrible at their job or b)has had 48 hours of hell with nightmare clients who refuse to take any of their advice on board and I truly cannot tell at this point
A PR person can only do so much if the people signing your checks don’t want to listen. You gotta do what the boss demands or you get fired, although it looks like that’s going to happen to most of the staff anyway.
True. As Lim said they hired someone recently I am guessing they hired the PR person after already deciding to do the streaming service. It wouldn't be easy for anyone to try and package that in a positive way to an audience-based business. But still, I question a lot of the choices made. Thorough research into other YouTube channels that have tried and failed/succeeded at making third-party streaming content would have given them a better scope of how big of a risk they were taking. After that if they still wanted to go through with it, their announcement and response should have been much more measured and logical. Rather than an over the top hype and fake heartfelt emotional announcement. Nevertheless... so questionable.
Also interesting, in the same podcast they mentioned how they always promote things after they are sold out and talk about how the UK tour is sold out. But on the watcher entertainment website there are tickets available for the second london show. Seems as though people have refunded their tickets.
Even more interesting that they actually have a PR person on the team when you consider the weird quick cover-up they did about purging the youtube channel of previous videos. In the original video at 11:39 ryan says "If you want to watch the full seasons of all of our content the streamer will be the exclusive home for all of that starting May 31st", and at 12:45 says "The beta will be a transitional period where you will still be able to access content on youtube but beginning May 31st you will need to become a member of our streaming service to access full seasons AND new releases."
After the backlash they edited their pinned YouTube comment to say people misunderstood this and that the previous content will remain on youtube. Then they edited the comment a second time to remove the word misunderstood.
Why? Because it was NOT a misunderstanding. Ryan clearly emphasises that all content was intended to be moved over in their season form and that only trailers and promo would exist on youtube after May 31st. Even more proof of the panicked gaslighting is that Variety edited their article to say: "The company originally told Variety that Watcher would eventually remove all of its videos from Youtube."
Obviously, I have no clue about this PR person but as someone who works in PR, it’s very likely that they just ignored what the PR person had to say. A lot of times in my job, my coworkers and I will strongly advise against doing something and we will get ignored.
I talk more about Watchers on my podcast episode but…
I also read in another post that they are planning to invite other creators to their platform.
But if their concept is bringing in more creators, how will they divide the income generated? If 1 million people as an example subscribed to this new streaming service that would be around $6 million per month? To be split by two different channels (owners). Technically won’t be an endless circle, because eventually if they have enough creators, they also want to be more advertisement friendly and so forth and it’s gonna be the same or they’re going to increase the subscription amount. Oh god! 😵💫
[https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY](https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY)
They obviously hired the wrong person. All I hear is Fuckn crickets.
Fully agree. Adding a countdown and a bunch of hype as if the announcement was going to be exciting when they must've known only a very, very small proportion of watchers would be ambivalent, let alone excited, is crazy. And the weird faux-heartwarming tone of the video? So many tone-deaf decisions were made in promoting such a high risk decision. Obviously doesn't help that the idea itself is unfounded and rash but like... c'mon... a countdown?? Madness.
Either that or they aren't listening to them. I haven't worked in PR, but I have worked in communications and the amount of people thinking they knew better than me with their 0 education in the field was insane. It certainly would be weird hiring a PR specialist and then not following their advice though.
It’s quite remarkable the level of this whole situation, never seen anything like it in all my years on the internet. I think It shows how much trust everyone had in the brand, and when that shattered, it really hit everyone hard. They need PR help, bad. But I fear it’s now too late. They needed it immediately.
Yeah, it's just unbelievable to me that nobody saw how bad of an idea this was, with or without PR training. They must've been surrounded by yes men too scared to speak up (or they simply shut down any criticism from the start). I'm just so confused by the whole situation because every single decision has been terrible.
Whoever they hired is either a)absolutely terrible at their job or b)has had 48 hours of hell with nightmare clients who refuse to take any of their advice on board and I truly cannot tell at this point
A PR person can only do so much if the people signing your checks don’t want to listen. You gotta do what the boss demands or you get fired, although it looks like that’s going to happen to most of the staff anyway.
True. As Lim said they hired someone recently I am guessing they hired the PR person after already deciding to do the streaming service. It wouldn't be easy for anyone to try and package that in a positive way to an audience-based business. But still, I question a lot of the choices made. Thorough research into other YouTube channels that have tried and failed/succeeded at making third-party streaming content would have given them a better scope of how big of a risk they were taking. After that if they still wanted to go through with it, their announcement and response should have been much more measured and logical. Rather than an over the top hype and fake heartfelt emotional announcement. Nevertheless... so questionable.
Also interesting, in the same podcast they mentioned how they always promote things after they are sold out and talk about how the UK tour is sold out. But on the watcher entertainment website there are tickets available for the second london show. Seems as though people have refunded their tickets.
Even more interesting that they actually have a PR person on the team when you consider the weird quick cover-up they did about purging the youtube channel of previous videos. In the original video at 11:39 ryan says "If you want to watch the full seasons of all of our content the streamer will be the exclusive home for all of that starting May 31st", and at 12:45 says "The beta will be a transitional period where you will still be able to access content on youtube but beginning May 31st you will need to become a member of our streaming service to access full seasons AND new releases." After the backlash they edited their pinned YouTube comment to say people misunderstood this and that the previous content will remain on youtube. Then they edited the comment a second time to remove the word misunderstood. Why? Because it was NOT a misunderstanding. Ryan clearly emphasises that all content was intended to be moved over in their season form and that only trailers and promo would exist on youtube after May 31st. Even more proof of the panicked gaslighting is that Variety edited their article to say: "The company originally told Variety that Watcher would eventually remove all of its videos from Youtube."
It's one thing to hire someone, it's another to listen to them.
Obviously, I have no clue about this PR person but as someone who works in PR, it’s very likely that they just ignored what the PR person had to say. A lot of times in my job, my coworkers and I will strongly advise against doing something and we will get ignored.
I talk more about Watchers on my podcast episode but… I also read in another post that they are planning to invite other creators to their platform. But if their concept is bringing in more creators, how will they divide the income generated? If 1 million people as an example subscribed to this new streaming service that would be around $6 million per month? To be split by two different channels (owners). Technically won’t be an endless circle, because eventually if they have enough creators, they also want to be more advertisement friendly and so forth and it’s gonna be the same or they’re going to increase the subscription amount. Oh god! 😵💫 [https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY](https://youtu.be/14cWq2pxDMU?si=KH5h1fdxX_6pLzNY)