Tone-Deaf Influencer Marketing

If you play any type of mobile game, you’ve run into the problem of ads. Some are relatively unobtrusive, inserting themselves between levels. Some are totally invasive, disrupting the game flow on a regular basis and taking you out of the game completely. The ads that are my favourites are the ones that allow you to choose whether you’re going to watch them.

Want to double your earnings? Here’s an ad!

Don’t particularly care? No sweat, here’s the next part of the game.

What I really don’t get is just how tone-deaf some of these ads can be. There are some fantastically creative ones, like the one where players from a mobile RPG are cast as employees in an office.

And then there’s the one with the Kardashian/Jenner family.

In this ad, Kardashian matriarch Kriss Jenner shows up at a random 20-something woman’s door, demanding to know if she attacked Kriss’ town in the Coin Master game. The ad then flashes back to a few minutes before where the anonymous 20-something is shown attacking Jenner’s town.

Jenner then demands 10% of the woman’s in-game currency, to which she responds “Are you serious?” At this point, Scott Disick (Jenner’s daughter Kim’s former boyfriend and father to some of Jenner’s grandchildren) steps into view and says “Trust me, she is serious.”

If you want to watch the ad itself, you can do so here.

Let’s start by saying that I’m no fan of the Kardashian-Jenner-West clan, and would much rather not see them at all. That aside, there are some serious WTF questions that come with this ad.

Let’s start with the Kardashian-Jenner clan and Mr. Disick. To put this ad into perspective, apparently, Kriss Jenner is so tightly wound that attacking her virtual town in a mobile game is going to bring her to your door to extort you.

Let me put that another way.

Kriss Jenner is so concerned about a town made up of 1s and 0s that she is going to hunt you down and demand you repay her. Oh, and it doesn’t matter if you’re the father of her grandchildren and considered to be “one of the family”, you’re still going to pay up.

What on earth was her publicist thinking? This ad makes her look like a money-hungry, attention-seeking celebrity who will do anything to make and keep virtual currency. Not the look you want for a multi-millionaire family matriarch who has been able to ride out the pandemic in a lifestyle most of can only dream of.

While the ad premiered before the peak of the pandemic and lockdowns, the fact that she is still allowing it to run is simply astounding.

But it’s not just Kriss who comes off looking bad, it’s game studio Moon Active who really steps in it. While I understand that people choose to share their avatars, likely from Facebook, the ad raises some serious privacy questions.

How exactly does Kriss Jenner manage to not only find out the full name and address of the person who attacked her virtual town, but manages to do it quickly enough to get to her house 10 minutes after she’s attacked?

Does Moon Active let you look up the names and addresses of everyone on the app?

Is their app so insecure that the information is just there for anyone who looks?

Do celebrities have some type of back door to the company that lets them get that information quickly?

Does Kriss Jenner have stock in Moon Active or some other involvement where she can get this information?

I understand that it’s an ad and that it is supposed to make you want to play it by teasing you with the idea a celebrity (who also plays the game) might show up at your door. There are just so many cringe-worthy moments packed into these 30 seconds that I have to wonder who on earth approved this ad, and has kept it in rotation since early 2020?

This was originally published on my Medium Blog: https://medium.com/look-again/tone-deaf-influencer-marketing-c82a427abb