Last Tuesday, YouTuber Leo Grasset was allegedly contacted by an obscure advertising agency regarding an “opportunity” regarding the American-manufactured COVID-19 vaccine. The agency reached out to Grasset as well as influencers like him, inquiring if they’d be interested in participating in an anti-Pfizer campaign.
Grasset is a health and science YouTuber with around 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube and was just one of the influencers who stepped forward about the strange proposal. The agency asked the influencers to come up with a 45-second to 1-minute long clip for Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. In the said video, they requested that the creators speak out against the vaccine, lying that “the mortality rate of the Pfizer vaccine is 3 times greater than the AstraZeneca.” Furthermore, the agency asked the influencers to present the information as factual as well as their own opinion. In other words, they didn’t want them to disclose that they were doing a partnership.
The faux-agency went by Fazze and was presented itself as a London-based public relations firm. Another health commentator, Mirko Drotschmann (with 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube) said that Fazze contacted him and asked if he wanted to partake in an “information campaign.” They allegedly asked the creator to lie about Pfizer death rates in exchange for money.
Incroyable.
L'adresse de l'agence londonienne qui m'a contacté est bidon. Ils n'ont jamais eu de locaux là bas, c'est un centre laser esthétique ! Tous les employés ont des profils LinkedIn chelous… qui disparaissent depuis ce matin. Tout le monde a bossé en Russie avant.
WTF pic.twitter.com/RKiEpYoMgV— Léo Grasset (@dirtybiology) May 24, 2021
The targeting of French influencers by Fazze prompted the French government to speak out against the scam. Olivier Véran, the French health minister, condemned the operation, calling it “pathetic and dangerous.”