Well, this is happening....

Good question about Audible and Harry's. It's related to double-dipping and partly to the nature of large corporations (as opposed to an automatic knee-jerk reaction against large corporations), but also to the type of message. First, I like the ecosystem of individuals and businesses (especially small ones) supporting each other out of a sense of good feeling for their product and a sincere hope for their success, rather than doing so only to help out their own bottom line. The feeling I get about Harry's and Audible is they are small businesses that Destin likes and so wants to help out. They are small enough that the people at those companies could like SED and be happy to support Destin in creating more content. I imagine that's the case. Ford, however, can have only one goal -- make more money. Ford is too big to have feelings and care that SED makes the world a better place. Ford cannot base business decisions on improving the world, except in as much as this helping improves their public image and drives sales. This venture is about marketers at Ford seeing an opportunity to hitch themselves to a rising YouTube supercelebrity and access a difficult-to-target demographic. Any improvement they make to the world will be incidental. That matters to me. Messaging for Harry's or Audible feels in line with my values. Shilling for Ford does not. Second, to me, "celebrity" endorsements of products and businesses are fine, and it doesn't even take much away from the message if it happens to be a paid endorsement, as long as it's presented honestly and directly as a paid endorsement. That's the way it is with Audible and Harry's. With Ford, however, he took part in a Ford-written commercial, and then threw in a random endorsement based on a few hours in a car and being treated well by marketers for a day. That's crossing the line. SED has never tied its content to Audible or casually mentioned someone's supercool Harry's razor incidentally, in passing, without mentioning he's being paid to appear for Harry's. If he ever did, that too would be going over the edge into double-dipping.

Stephen, Thanks for the well written clarification of your point. If I understand you correctly, this seems to you like double dipping? The big money has sponsored a commercial which then becomes a SED episode; patrons should not be included in the sponsorship of this episode, since it has already been covered. Or maybe the other way around? Or is the issue that the sponsor is a large corporation v.s. smaller businesses like Harry's and Audible? I (we) have been contributing for episodes that are also commercials for these smaller businesses for awhile. I really don't see a lot of difference. I agreed to support each episode with a nominal fee because I think the whole concept of SED is cool and feel like I am getting my $ worth. I didn't place any constraints on who else might also be contributing.

Roger Hankins

Roger, I agree, this is Destin allowing Ford to use his identity. Destin's also getting a lot of exposure for his channel and I think it's great that more people are going to find out about SED, but all I'm interested in is Ford using Destin's public image. That's what corporate sponsorship is. It's when a company pays an "honestly" popular person (someone who's popular for actually contributing something) to flog their product in some way so that that person's popularity will rub off on the unrelated product and it will become popular only by association with the "honestly" popular brand. Also, I agree that there's no questioning the quality of Destin's work. He's my second favourite producer of content of any kind on the Internet (second only to Khan Academy) and I'll certainly stay subscribed to this channel and continue watching, learning and sharing. What I cannot abide is the videos on the channel -- that we pay for -- being sold as promotional tie-ins for arbitrary products. If I sponsor an artist, I'm literally paying for that art to be created, and I'm not going to continue paying Destin to produce advertising that he's going to sell again to Ford or whomever. If this is the course Destin's going, that's fine, but there's no place there for my sponsorship. The only reason I'd stay is to feel a connection to the SED, but that'd just be for my ego, not for the production and distribution of the SED videos, which is the reason I became a patron. On the other hand, if Destin agrees that he shouldn't be reselling content that he's already been paid for, then, like his non-science videos, he can not count them as sponsored videos that Patreon contributors pay for. That's would be just fine in my book. To be clear, I'm not against him getting advertising sponsors. I'm against him selling them product that Patreon contributors paid for.

Stephen, I Could be wrong, but I see this more as Ford trying to be identified with Destin, than Destin trying to be identified with Ford. If they are willing to help contribute to the college bills, great. They wouldn't be talking to him if it wasn't for the quality of his work. I'll stay onboard.

Roger Hankins

A car commercial? Really? A big part of what I like about Patreon is that it's a strong and reliable private revenue stream for independent content producers that is controlled only by the content producers (you) and content consumers (us). I'm happy to continue giving money so you can have more free time to make more content while still being a responsible father. Yay! On the other hand, I'm not happy to give money so you can raise your public profile to attract corporate sponsorship, and I'm even less happy about being a patron of a Ford-sponsored tie-in video. Destin, if you're considering direct sponsorship of commercial products as a regular part of Smarter Every Day going forward, that's fine, but if so, to me SED doesn't fit the patron model anymore and I'll have to bow out.

lol... fixed

Smarter Every Day

Destin's into the whole brevity thing. Must be a Lebowski fan.

Kristy

As long as its BRIEF :)

I now have a reason to watch American Idol! Can't wait to see it!

RedKB

Nice half smile, Destin!

Memming Park