have you ever heard of no-when?

1) If a brand reaches out to you, people are free to talk about that. A brand emailing you is not a magical legally binding contract. Nor is it “a crime” to tell people a brand reached out to you. Some agents try to tell people that to intimidate them but that’s not how anything works. Some campaigns dont even have contracts

2) Bands are allowed to do undisclosed paid videos for a song because a product is not being sold. This happens with political videos as well. Its not regulated or required to be disclosed by the FTC but it should be

3) If an influencer does not follow the terms of their contract that is also not “a crime” and 99 times out of 100 they will not “be sued” and they certainly wont “go to jail.” First, their agent has to notice and decide its worth the drama. Secondly, they have to refuse to work things out with the brand amicably. Then, they either wont be paid, wont get the full amount, their agent might get mad if they even have one, the company may just eat the loss, etc depending on various factors.

4) Influencers DO NOT “do research” on anything they are given a brief and barely even read that. It is fairly normal to have a fully signed contract and then the creator decides to drop because they didnt look at what they were promoting before signing. It is also common for creators to not follow their contract due to negative comments and it can take months to resolve. The solution is not “they go to JAIL” its that they most likely get partial payment and the agency makes an internal note not to work with them again

5) A lot of brands dont even have an NDA because that doesnt make any sense. Nobody is posting the email addresses of the sender because they dont want to doxx random marketing people esp if they have a good relationship with the agency

6) If this even happened whoever wrote the brief is a marketing person that prob doesnt care if the video is 100% aligned with mcr deep lore and punk ethos they prob care about the CPM which is cost per 1000 impressions because they are being judged by their manager and director on those metrics

7) Not all influencer videos have a script but tons of them do have a word for word script. Or they have suggested examples and everyone just does the suggested examples

8) Assuming this happened, the label probably hired an agency or something. There is no “proof it came from MCR” because it didnt come from the desk of mx gerard way nor is mx gerard way looking at or approving every video. Where I work not even other ppl on my team see every single one of each others campaign videos

9) Someone deleting a video is not proof a brand campaign didnt happen, it just means that specific person doesnt care about not being paid or if the agency works with them again

10) “Random nobodies” do get reached out to for campaigns because they are less expensive but can still go viral. Marketing in general is moving away from influencers and towards community programs and everybody is obsessed with community programs. TBH the “MCRMY” thing is probably a community program

11) On the subject of there being “only 6 videos with the same caption” and “MCR can afford more than 6 videos.” At least for me personally usually campaigns I manage are anywhere from $20k for 15 creators or $1M for 200. Assuming this was a smaller campaign that might mean that only 6 people used the provided script and other people did their own idea or havent posted yet. Bigger campaigns also take months to run and tbh a random cover would be a micro campaign

12) Everyone is saying the brief is fake and tbh it is short but that brief sure looks like it was written by a millennial in marketing or someone trying to please a millennial manager with a specific vision who gets offended if you suggest they are no longer in touch with the youth or internet culture

13) Why is it so unrealistic to people that a major label band would not do any social media marketing when that is all advertising. Like …

a) the shambling rotten corpse of the nonbinary 30 year old who died in the music video

Remember: The "'E" in email stands for evidence.

That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.

But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.

Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: "I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx" Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.

Me; That's illegal.

Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh...

Me: That's an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.

HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.

Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.

I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.

HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.

Me: You still haven't given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.

HR: Oh haha yes here you go.

The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.

After a casual conversation with friends, write up a brief synopsis of what you discussed & agreed to. (...Do not email this to friends unless you have their agreement that this would be a fun group project.) Get practice with,

"A, B, and C had a brief meeting about food options after the big game. We decided on pizza, with A&B agreeing to contribute X dollars each, and C agreeing to contribute Y dollars and also bring soda. A will call for pizza on the day of the game and schedule it for delivery at 8:30 pm."

"A, B & C discussed movie options. A wanted something lite and fun; B wanted something scifi; C was fine with anything but horror. Nobody wanted superheroes. Decided on Lost Space Wanderers which opened last weekend; C agreed to research theatre options and report tomorrow."

...and so on. Practice describing the results of "meetings" with friends and you'll be ready to sum up "boss told me to set aside Project A to focus on Project B for the next two weeks" - because what's likely is that boss didn't say anything that clear; boss talked about how important Project B is and how the company needs parts X and Y done asap and you have the best skills for that, and when you mentioned how much time Project A was taking, boss said "eh don't worry about that right now; marketing is breathing down my neck so we really need part X by Friday, okay?"

...at no point did you get a direct instruction.

To: Boss

From: you

Cc: work group, team lead, project partner, direct supervisor, etc.

(Depending on severity of problem) Bcc: your personal email

"Hi Boss, I'm trying to resolve some confusion here. After our conversation about priority projects on [date] I reached out to you for confirmation of these details (see attached outlook item) and didn't receive an update to the timeline since that communication. I have been working from the agenda we discussed (summarized in attached outlook item from [date]) in absence of further direction. Do you have a copy of your response updating the changes or correcting mistakes in my summary? It's possible that I didn't see your email and I'd like to identify where a communication was missed so that we can avoid issues like this in future projects.

Best,

[Name]"