As someone who has been sponsored in the past, got free stuff, got paid, got special gigs and treatment etc I’d say brand sponsorships and endorsements (while they sound sexy) is mostly a trap. Why?

Well first of all, you lose your true opinion. For example as I was getting free cameras from Fujifilm I learned:

I would actually never spend my own and real money on a Fujifilm camera (and even before I got sponsored, I never purchased one with my own money).

Same when I got free phones from Samsung. Truth be told, I’d never actually buy a Samsung smartphone for myself in cash.

So as a consequence, it is great having free stuff but the downside is that I don’t use the stuff I really want to be using, and also I don’t know what my true preferences are. I’m not saying 100% undiluted what I *really* think and believe, in the low-key fear I might stop receiving free stuff in the future. So in this way, you become trapped.

Social media pressure and entrapment and slavery

Then another problem is that if you’re sponsored or have some sort of brand endorsement, you need to remain “on brand” and don’t do or say anything which might be considered offensive. In other words, you start to self censor yourself and make yourself “PG” rated for a wide audience (just like what The Rock does). Typically sponsored folks never curse or say anything “politically incorrect” on social media.

Also, if you’ve received some sort of success from your social media style, then you become a prisoner to your (old and past) style. You no longer want to innovate, or you’re too scared to innovate. Why? What made you famous and successful in the first place pigeon holes you into just continually repeating yourself with the same old formula. And if you keep repeating the same old formula, in the middle to long term into the future, you will lose interest or relevance to your audience.

Your innovation, recklessness and doing things differently in the first place is what got you here. Then the lesson is you must NOT just keep repeating your old past innovations!

For example the past “mumble rappers” got famous and got hot *because* their mumble rap style was so different from the clear rapping style of others in the game. But now that *everyone* mumble raps, mumble rapping is no longer cool or cache. Then the morale:

You must never stop innovating!