Massive brands including Burger King, ASOS, London’s Barbican centre and Hello Fresh have pulled advertising from Russell Brand’s Rumble channel, The News Movement can reveal.
Three of the companies have removed their ads from Rumble altogether after The News Movement found that they were appearing alongside Brand’s videos.
Burger King has paused advertising on Brand’s channel while broadcasters and police look at claims of rape and sexual assault against him.
The comedian has been accused of rape and sexual assaults against four women between 2003 and 2013. He denies the claims. Brand, 48, has a huge audience on Rumble with over 1.4m followers. There has been concern about the increasing discussion of conspiracy theories on his videos on that platform.
In his response to a recent investigation into claims of sexual misconduct against him, he suggested there was “another agenda at play” and referenced “co-ordinated media attacks”.
He has made several videos that discuss a conspiracy theory centred on protests by Dutch farmers.
Brand, who is married and expecting a third child, also repeatedly refers to “The Great Reset” - a common term among conspiracy theorists, often alleging a global elitist power grab said to link to the World Economic Forum. TNM approached other brands including Ralph Lauren, eBay and Hilton hotels, whose ads all came up on Brand’s channel but none replied to requests for comment.
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YouTube suspended ads from his channel on their site for allegedly "violating" its creator policies. The BBC has removed
some shows Brand made while working there after the four women took part in a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4's Dispatches.
Brand has been dropped by his literary agent, tour promoter and book publisher in the days since the allegations emerged.
In a video released before the allegations were made public, Brand said he had always been open about his promiscuity.
“During that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual,” he said in a video on Rumble and YouTube.
“I was always transparent about that. Then almost too transparent, and I'm being transparent about it now as well.
Burger King said: “Burger King has paused all advertising on the channel while investigations into the allegations are ongoing.”
ASOS declined to comment but TNM understands the company removed their ads this week.
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Hello Fresh said: “Thanks for pointing this out to us. We have manually removed our ads from Rumble.”
The Barbican said: “We have now asked our media agency to exclude this site from where our ads appear.”
Rumble has said it has no plans to remove advertising altogether but did not reply to a request for comment. Google and Brand himself have yet to reply to us either.
When a UK Parliamentary committee asked Rumble if it would do the same as YouTube, Rumble said “We don't agree with the behaviour of many Rumble creators, but we refuse to penalise them for actions that have nothing to do with our platform”