Should Smith and Wesson be trusting NutNFancy to promote its products?

J

johnelmore

New member
From watching his Youtube videos, I believe he comes to good conclusions. His reviews seem too long winded and I find myself fast forwarding to the conclusion. I tried to find more information on him, but hit a brick wall. There is simply no information out there.

Recently, I found that Smith and Wesson is advertising its M&P 10 rifle with a link to NutNFancy's review. Now this individuals youtube reviews went from a casual user review all the way to the front of the manufacturers website. In essence, Smith and Wesson is stating they believe you should trust NutNFancy.

http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/...85153_757785_757784_ProductDisplayErrorView_Y

Well, first, before I trust someone it would be nice to know their name and see a resume. That would be a start. When I go out to the range, there seem to be plenty of knowledgable people. There is always that one guy at the range who seems like the Encyclopedia of firearm knowledge. However, would I put their names on the front of a firearms manufacturers website like Smith and Wesson?

So I kind of wonder to myself, I ask aloud. Is NutNFancy a firearms expert that I can trust? Is it really wise for Smith & Wesson to promote its products using an anonymous Youtube star?
 
They're making a good attempt to use the social media to their advantage, and do the whole "grass roots" thing. I hate corporate lingo.

It probably won't hurt S&W's popularity. When we watch online reviews of something, it's because we know nothing about it. Then it doesn't matter to the viewer if the reviewer is truly an expert on a given firearm, he won't know any numbers that aren't included on the website, any nuances of the design or most common failure points found during development. He's not the engineer. No youtube reviewer is and at that point viewers don't think to ask the more technical questions or are not interested. The most youtube reviewers can do for us is compile the specs, give us a closeup shot, point out any obvious things we might find if we shot it ourselves, and tell us how it feels in *their* hand and try not to let bias get in the way. That's my POU anyway.

3. NutNFancy ends up giving a lot of "it depends" answers. Which is true for a lot of things in life and is a safe middle ground. But did we need him to tell us that? :D

4. The better the shooter is, the less it depends on the firearm.

5. I feel he is long winded, refers to himself and his youtube channel in third person way too much and gives the impression of a very healthy self esteem. So I cringe a little if he is officially tied to S&W.

That's because I like Jerry Miculek who is part of the face of S&W. Very skilled, well spoken, and pleasant/up beat. He could brag but never does - coming from a world record holder. He's got class. He doesn't say Duuude as much. That's just my preference.
 
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Yeah, if a spokes person is a top shooter, and a knowledgeable gun smith, then they can probably be depended on for accurate opinions.
Otherwise they might not be any more worthy of trust than a lot of other folks we run across on the web.
No shortages of self appointed experts there.
But you can't help but admire a guy who gets around crowded cities on a foot powered scooter.
 
I can't tolerate 40-something minutes of him talking about himself, so didn't watch the videos about his AF career.

Far as I know, unless he says otherwise somewhere, he was a tanker pilot & never in an air combat role.
Or any other combat role.


As far as being "associated" with S&W goes, they're just using his stuff as a social media utility.
He's not associated with them, they're merely taking advantage of one modern method of getting their name bandied about.
Linking to a video they didn't produce costs them exactly nothing.

I'm currently linked on two Ruger products on their Facebook page, but I'm not associated with them in any way other than them using reviews I did.

Just the times we live in.

He's no more of a Smith spokesman than I am a Ruger spokesman. :)

As far as his credibility goes (lives about 30 miles from me, but I've never run across him), generally you can establish much of that from a critical view of his content.
If what he says makes sense, it's probably usable.
If not, confirm with other sources.

You should confirm from more than one source anyway. :)
One review is one data point based on a sample of one.
Multiple reviews give more complete data, and tend to show trends.
Denis
 
If I was interested in a S&W product that had a link to a Nutnfancy review, I'd walk away and never come back.

He irritates the crap out of me, and performs what I believe are dangerous and/or illegal acts.

How do I know? ...Because my "playground" is the same as NutNFancy's.
I grew up camping, hunting, and shooting all over the state of Utah, but primarily in the desert. I still know parts of the desert better than I know my home town.

My thoughts on a mental compilation of a few of his videos...
'So, let's go see what the new Fandango Super Tactical Face Annihilator can do at 800 yards with some Wolf Gold, on public land closed to shooting, while shooting over the heads of Army personnel on their way to a remote guard station and using a State-owned gravel pit full of machinery for the backstop!' :rolleyes:


(Edited to remove the chaff. It didn't add to the discussion.)
 
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Far as I know, unless he says otherwise somewhere, he was a tanker pilot & never in an air combat role.
Click to expand...

And that's as far as "you know." Really depends upon where he was driving the tanker doesn't it?

I have a friend who retired as a Colonel in the Air Force and piloted tankers in Viet Nam. He also has close to 100 hours in the front seat of a B-52 which he flew in Viet Nam.

Attempting to denigrate someone because of your perceptions of his job and what he's done is not the way to critique something. It's just small, and says more about your lack of fairness in evaluating something than anything about him.

And btw - I'm good for about 5 minutes of him talking myself as, if there's a long way to get to a point - that's the route he takes with side trips down numerous rabbit holes along the way...

On the other hand...it does look like he's having fun in the desert with guns...
 
Buck,
I worded my statements very mildly, and they were based on similar discussions of his credibility elsewhere.

My point was simply that, if you were to view his videos as coming from a combat veteran & therefor with greater credibility attaching, you should reconsider.

If you don't, and you view his material as being created by a guy who likes to play with stuff & talk about it, you can still learn from him.
He covers various aspects of various products & there's at least SOME useful info in there that you can walk away with, usually.

If you took my quoted statement as denigrating his AF job, you are greatly mistaken.
It was an attempt to address the original question relating to his qualifications & "street cred" in the context of the reviews he does.

I'm former Air Force, I live in Utah, some of those sage & cedars look very familiar to me too. (Franken & I've both spent a helluva lot of time out in some of his "AO". Some of that together, when Franken was a LOT shorter. :) )

I gave Nut'n a certain amount of leeway because of those shared associations, but that only goes so far.

If you see a video of him wearing combat gear while knocking about the sagebrush, I merely say don't assume he did it for real in evaluating his credibility.

He CAN disseminate useful info, if you have the patience to sift it out, and you can tolerate the delivery. He CAN shoot. He CAN evaluate.
This, again, is to address the original poster's point.
Denis
 
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I think he is a goofy, blabbermouth dirt shooter with a cartoonish worldview, but he knows his guns, and knows how to shoot them. S&W is visibly trying to engage their customers with new marketing methods, and YT "Stars" and trainers is one significant way to do this. I actually suggested something similar to them in an interview a few years back, but they seemed to have reservations about the method at the time. I think this has been legitimized since Colin Noir was picked up by the NRA.

It will either go well, or it will go poorly. I doubt S&W's bottom line will be affected if it doesn't go well unless Nutn does something monumentally stupid.

I am sure that S&W has PR professionals managing his ongoing "image". Time will tell if Nutn has any issues with S&W's PR "suggestions." When you bring up self-starter YouTube people to be spokesman, etc, you typically run into issues regarding what the spokeperson's concept of integrity and right to represent their own opinion ends up being.
 
Seriously doubt S&W has anybody "managing" any part of Nut'n. :)

Them linking his review doesn't mean they're paying him a dime, nor does it mean they have any say in what he does or says.

I can't see it as a coordinated campaign.
Denis
 
I like nutn's videos for the most part. He covers a wide variety of topics. Is he long winded ? Yeah perhaps. Skip forward if you don't have the time. But I enjoy a nice long review. He seems to know his stuff and I have bought guns based on his reviews as well as stuff said on this forum. Good for nutnfancy!
 
I didn't take the time to watch the videos. I do want to comment on the combat comments. I flew F4 Phantoms in SEA as well as B-52s. Tanker crews are held in high esteem by fighter pilots. Tankers often violated standing orders and penetrated enemy territory to save wounded and crippled fighters. So don't disparage that he has combat time.

However, I must point out that speaks to his character, not to his firearm knowledge or experience. As a pilot he had little or no ground combat experience.
 
His complete lack of training makes me stop watching him the moment he starts pulling the trigger.
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This is a little silly. Do you only take gun advice from SEALs and Green Berets? The guy has been doing his thing for like 30 years... he probably shoots more in a year than most average guys do in a lifetime. He has hands-on experience with thousands of different products that he does his best to evaluate "in the field". Collectively, he's probably shot as many guns as everybody reading this thread combined. He doesn't pretend to teach tactics or rewrite the book on assaulting a hill... for the most part, he just does gear reviews. And has been said before, the guy can shoot.

Would you say that guy who's been tending bar for 30 years isn't qualified to talk about human social interaction because he doesn't have a sociology degree? No, but you'd ask him how to hit on a chick before you'd head down to a local college and ask a professor.

How much does it cost?
How reliable is it?
Does it do what the advertising claims?
What would you use it for?
How often will you use it?
How easy is it to clean?
How much does it weigh?
How easy will it be for you to do what you think you're going to use it for?
Do you really need it?
How long will it last?
Is there something better/worse/equivalent out there for same/more/less money?


This is the kind of stuff he focuses on... granted, he's a overly verbose, but he's living his dream... and if it's not too hard on some of your ego's reading this, isn't it kinda the ultimate "dude life". The guy did a whole career as a military pilot, got married and raised a family, and spends his spare time in the outdoors shooting guns and doing his best to be a great American. And some of you bitch about the quality of his gear reviews because he's not a SEAL... in fact, you poo-poo that there could be anything useful in his products because he has no "training"... unless you count the military firearms training, survival training, and basic combat skills that any civilian watching his stuff ISN'T going have. For the average person, he has far more "training" than they do. Not SAS Commando stuff, but what the hell do you guys want in the form of qualifications before you're willing to just listen to what a guy has to say and decide for yourself if there's anything you can use?

And let's not get ahead of ourselves about how much useful information a person suddenly has about guns and gear because they've seen "combat". Unless you're in some sort of special operator class, your equipment selection is very limited, and not even close to "the best"... and even operators are going to stick with what works until some new-fangled thing comes along. Yes, you're going to be intimately familiar with the gear you are issued, but your average SEAL isn't going to have anything to say about whether an Rock Island 1911 is better than a Taurus 1911.

I'm not a fan-boi by any means, and Frankenmauser definitely makes some good points, but I'll admit that when I'm in the market for something new, I'll see if he's made a video that might pertain. I ALWAYS learn something from his videos, and it's usually something "real-world" that goes into the decision-making mix. In the end, he's ONE source of information out of the dozen places you'll do homework before you decide to spend your money on something. Some of his info you'll discard, some will be relevant, but I have found that watching the occasional video of his is not a waste of my time.
 
He maybe goofy and i don't agree with everything be says byt atleast he isn't on anyones payroll

With him havin so many haters they would have found out
 
You'd be surprised about how many "trained" people have little knowledge about how their firearm actually functions.

Also, to somehow devalue a veterans service because they didn't kick in doors is not acceptable in my book. Cemeteries are full of support personnel, and many still living have Purple Hearts. Everyone signs up with the possibility of dying in war. I know infantry with no combat, and mechanics that have been in combat.

I don't watch his videos much, but I have some of them. I could not care less about military service when looking at reviews for a civilian firearm.

Also, military service does not grant you a supreme intellect or make a person superior in any way. I served a long time and have been a vet for a few years... I get really tired of the attitudes of other vets.
 
Guys,
To make it perfectly clear, although I thought I had:

I DID NOT IN ANY WAY DISPARAGE TANKER PILOTS AS A CLASS.
Move on.

My entire & sole point there was to address the fact that, regardless of jargon used & apparel worn, the guy is not a "special forces" or ground combat vet.

This in NO way diminishes his ability to play with products & talk about them.

My ONLY purpose in bringing it up, as I very plainly said, was to address the original poster's questions about background, qualifications, and credibility.

For some, combat experience is a factor in establishing credibility.
For some, military equates to "expert" in all things weapon-wise, regardless of what that military experience was.
For some, a military background infuses some sort of "bad-ass" dimension, again regardless of what that experience was. Or was not.

Once again, as plainly as I can express it:
Nut'n has no direct experience in ground combat personally.
If anybody thinks his years as a tanker pilot give him any special expertise in evaluating guns, knives, or tactical applications there-of, might be good to re-think that.

This DOES NOT MEAN THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN LEARN FROM HIM, if you can sit through his videos & presentation style.
He's perfectly capable of describing a product, and his impressions are not inherently, automatically, and inevitably either wrong or useless.

They're occasionally superficial in content, typically very long-winded, and frequently presented with some of the personality traits of a 16-year-old trying to be cool.
Dude. Whatevs. And that annoying whip (?) sound effect.

If you can wade through all that & sift out info you can use, go for it.

IN NO WAY AM I DISPARAGING TANKER PILOTS.
I'm merely saying tanker drivers are not automatic tactical ground combat experts merely because they drove KCs.

And- they don't have to be ground combat experts to try out guns & gear and talk about them.

If somebody tells you "Dude, Nut'n is the rill dill, he was MILITARY!!!!!!", that's no basis for evaluating his credibility. Like, whatevs.
Ultimately, it's his material you should be focusing on.

Judge his stuff by any useful content you can find in it.
His military background as a pilot has nothing to do with that.


And, yes- a company would, could & does link without having direct control.
Nut'n is not the Face Of S&W, not on their payroll.
They're just taking advantage of social media.

Not like they paid him to do that review so they could link it.
Chicken & egg thing.
Here, review video came first, then S&W used it.
Not "Hey, Nut'n, do us a video on our product & we'll link it." :)

Gunmakers are increasingly using social media links, it costs them nothing.
Denis
 
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