Ethics

Our channel isn’t the largest on the YouTube platform by any means, but we truly value the relationship we’ve built with our community over the past decade. 

Sponsored content is extremely rare on our channel. If we choose to work with a brand, it will always be because we actually use the product or service and genuinely trust the brand to provide excellent customer service and support. More importantly, we will always make it abundantly clear that such content is sponsored. If we don’t explicitly say that a video is sponsored, then it is not sponsored. Simple as that!

In general, we prefer not to create sponsored work. If we do partner with a brand, you can bet they’ve seen this page and that we’ve been able to build a relationship with them over an extended period of time based on mutual trust and understanding.

Beyond that, we think it’s important to question the purpose behind a sponsorship or the guest. For us, a sponsor should support and enable what we do and our guests should genuinely want to share their knowledge with others in their field. Ideally it’s a win-win-win situation for the viewer, the brand, and our company. Our channel has never been and never will be an extension of any brand’s marketing department.

Most of the products we use or talk about are purchased by us, but sometimes we will rent or borrow equipment. Occasionally companies will send a product to us free of charge, and we will always clearly state in the video and description that it was provided to us at no cost. Usually the reason we accept these offers is simply due to practicality– we don’t have an unlimited budget and sometimes there are things that we're curious about or that we’ve been asked for our opinion on, and we would go broke pretty quickly otherwise (these products are either used regularly, returned, or donated after the video).

Offering free products never guarantees a positive review (or even a review/video at all). Just like with sponsorships, we're extremely selective about accepting anything for free and will only do so after discussing this Ethics Statement with the brand.

All that being said, there are a few additional non-negotiable points we’d like to share for the sake of clarity. We’ve made all of this info publicly available to viewers and brands alike so that we’re all on the same page:

• Our content is our own. We create and produce each video based on what we're excited about and what we think will be relevant/helpful to our audience at that time.

• Our reviews are always as objective as possible and our opinions are always our own. 

• We do not submit previews of videos to anyone for approval or revisions. No exceptions.

• We have full control over our content calendar. While we're happy to work collaboratively when possible for scheduling, no outside party can pay or otherwise influence us in return for scheduling priority. 

• Just because a product is provided to us at no cost does not mean we will review it or feature it in a video. We do not make videos in exchange for free products or services.

• We never work with Amazon resellers– only directly with reputable brands. 

• We typically avoid “preproduction” versions of products/software and prefer to use what will actually be delivered to other customers.

• We appreciate when companies offer information about their products/services, but we will only include what we think is relevant and necessary in any videos we create.

• We will work to seek answers for anything about a product/service that we don’t fully understand to make our videos as accurate and helpful as possible.

• While it usually makes sense to include certain links in video descriptions or social media posts, we retain full control over what is shared on our accounts across all platforms.

• We never include additional social media promotion in sponsorship agreements (Instagram, Twitter, Etc).

• YouTube’s “includes paid promotion” option will be checked any time a video features a product or service that was provided at no cost, even if it’s not an official sponsorship.

• We're more than happy to let others share our videos, as long as the post links directly to the original video uploaded to our YouTube channel. Videos may not be re-uploaded elsewhere.

• We do not guarantee any number of views or any amount of audience engagement on any videos or content. As much as we want everything we create to “perform” well, there are too many variables beyond our control for us to make any claims regarding potential viewership, but we do watch all our videos before publishing, so I guess we can guarantee at least one view.

Thank you for taking the time to read and understand our Ethics Statement. This probably doesn’t cover every scenario under the sun, but it should give you a pretty solid idea of how highly we value the integrity behind what we do and the relationship with anyone who takes the time to check out something we’ve made.

We stole this Ethics Statement from @tombuck.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us via studio@coldbreakusa.com