The Free Bottle Isn't the Whole Problem

After spending a lot of time around product reviews and fragrance creators, I've started noticing something more interesting than whether a reviewer says they like a product.

Spend enough time watching fragrance videos, and you start to notice a peculiar phenomenon.

A bottle you've barely heard of suddenly seems to exist in every room on the internet.

One person is opening it. Another is describing it. Somebody else is ranking it among their favorites. A fourth person has apparently discovered that this is the fragrance we've all been waiting for.

That's quite an achievement for a product most of us didn't know existed last Tuesday.

Now, I'm not suggesting there's something inherently suspicious about a company sending its products to creators. If I made something I wanted people to try, I would probably want people to try it, too.

What interests me is the effect that happens before anyone even gives an opinion.

The company has already influenced the conversation by deciding whose hands the product ends up in.

A review starts before the review

I've spent a great deal of time reviewing products and working around creator content. I've also watched how access, attention, and the desire to grow can shape the things people choose to talk about.

We usually discuss independence as though it starts with the words coming out of the creator's mouth. Did they praise the product because they genuinely liked it? Did they mention the things they didn't like? Would they have said the same thing if they had paid full price?

Those are reasonable questions. But there's another one I think matters just as much.

Would this product have received any attention at all if it hadn't arrived for free?

A creator can have a sincere opinion about something and still be participating in a conversation somebody else helped choose.

That's not the same as lying. It's an editorial influence that's easy to overlook because the audience mostly sees the finished video.

If ten people receive the same product and seven of them genuinely like it, those seven reviews might be completely sincere. But viewers also experience seven videos about the same thing. Repetition can make a product feel important long before anyone has established whether it's especially useful, original, or worth the price.

You don't have to be dishonest to become part of the marketing.

I know the appeal of receiving things

There is something enjoyable about getting a product you didn't have to buy. I don't think we need to pretend otherwise.

Review programs can introduce people to products they would never have considered on their own. They also create work. Testing something, forming a real opinion, writing or recording a useful review—that takes time, even when the item itself didn't cost you anything upfront.

But free products can also become their own little ecosystem. More arrivals mean more things to test. More things to test mean more content ideas. Eventually, it's possible to spend so much time talking about what's been sent to you that you forget to ask what you actually wanted to talk about.

That question interests me because I've been thinking about the kind of creator I want to be, and the kind of information I find useful as a consumer.

I'd rather hear somebody explain why an inexpensive fragrance surprised them than watch a performance designed to prove how important the person is for having been sent an expensive one.

And while I'm on the subject, a long list of fragrance notes doesn't automatically make somebody's nose—or their review—more credible. Sometimes I'd learn more from a person who simply says, 'This smells like the kind of thing I'd wear to dinner, but not to work.'

That's at least an opinion I can understand.

The part the audience can't see

Here's the bigger problem with treating product coverage as an endless sequence of unboxings: the most interesting products aren't always the ones with the most aggressive distribution.

Smaller brands may be doing something genuinely different. A familiar product may deserve another look. A creator might have an insight about consumer behavior, quality, pricing, or a trend that doesn't require anybody to ship another package.

But those stories have to compete with a very convenient one: a box arrived, and now there's something to film.

The audience can wind up seeing a strangely narrow version of a market that contains far more choices than the current wave of videos suggests.

None of this means every creator receiving a product is compromised. Some are careful, candid, and perfectly willing to say they don't like something. Some brands actively want that kind of feedback. And consumers are capable of making up their own minds.

I just think we should pay attention to who chooses the menu before we congratulate ourselves on having so many reviews to read.

What I look for now

When I watch somebody review a product, I'm less impressed by how much terminology they know than by whether I can tell they've thought independently about what they're holding.

Does their description sound like something they experienced? Do they explain who might not enjoy it? Can they compare it to something useful without reciting a manufacturer's marketing copy?

And most of all, do they occasionally talk about things nobody handed them?

I don't think the answer is to reject free products. That would be an unnecessarily dramatic conclusion, and I am trying to reserve my dramatic conclusions for situations that earn them.

I think the answer is remembering that receiving something is not, by itself, a reason the rest of us should be interested in it.

The product is free to the creator. The audience is still paying with its attention.

I'd like that attention to be worth something.