Travel Weekly Blog

This is the YouTube channel of a user calling themselves 'MSCCruiseLines'.

Take a close look at the favourites...

Tom Cruise goes crazy? The unfunny truth about Scientology? Some crazy scientology stuff?

Needless to say, this channel isn't anything to do with MSC Cruises. The user has been reposting official MSC vids as replies to other cruise clips, such as ours - which is what brought it to my attention.

A quick call to MSC Cruises UK head of PR (and former TW editor) Sarah Longbottom reveals that there is no official MSC Cruises YouTube channel, though there are nicely curated ones here and here.

How to deal with it? Well, YouTube's T&Cs don't directly deal with impersonating a brand, and a 2007 article on Marketing Sherpa suggests that usernames are basically first-come-first-served. It's unlikely that MSC could expect direct help from YouTube or its owner Google.

The brand whose case is discussed on Marketing Sherpa got this response from YouTube:

We are not in a position to adjudicate the appropriateness of a user's name selection. We do not disable accounts in response to such allegations. We recommend instead that people pursue any claims they may have directly with the user in question.

Speak to your lawyers, in other words, and no doubt the lawyers would (eventually) be able to do something about it - there's clearly a case for saying this brings the brand into disrepute.

Ultimately it's just a minor irritant, and could probably be ignored. But it's another interesting case study on brand protection in the social media badlands...