Well, if you sponsor a YouTuber to do a brand placement and he goes and does something drastic that wasn't in the contract, should you be punished? You're the victim too, he brought negative press to your doorstep brand-wise.

I think there’s no way to practically do what I want. I don’t think it would work out.

I just sort of feel like there should be some sort of incentive to help ensure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. If you have a contract that explicitly says what the person is supposed to do and they don’t, then it seems like you have a good defense to me.

On the other hand if you have a contract that says something along the lines of “do something that gets 1 million views and will pay you $200,000” then I feel like you should be liable.

I really dislike the current trend of people just doing extreme stuff to try to get views. A few people have been killed, it’s kind of amazing the number isn’t higher. And I’m wary of anything that might be seen as encouraging them.

But again, there’s probably no way to actually enforce that in any kind of law.

Ideally, the contract should stipulate that you agree to have brand placements in upcoming content that isn't outside the ordinary of what's come before it (i.e., an alignment of values), ergo not stuff like this that comes out of nowhere and is unlike anything else thus far. The pros will want to approve each and every video prior to publication, but a staggering number of mid-sized biz don't sign off or see it beforehand because they perhaps quite naively trust people to err on the side of good taste and legality.

Publicity stunts and gimmicks are nothing new, even extreme ones, it's just now it reaches the entire world instead of just that area or country, especially if the "story" is pretty much as simple as a YouTube URL and a pithy summary from a journo.

Seems like this guy didn't even really have a financial incentive for this stunt - it cost him $5000 for the plane and another $5000 for the helicopter to pull it out of the forest. All that for $8000 from the metal wallet company.

I guess you could guess he was doing it for potentially more lucrative sponsorships later. But I really don't think he was thinking that far ahead. Not if he thought he was going to get away with this foolishness.

That's assuming there wasn't also anything like crypto involved as a means of transferring value.

> current trend of people just doing extreme stuff to try to get views. A few people have been killed

This is just natural selection at work.