“Friendly Fire” has been a fundraising campaign that has been taking place since 2015, and this year it broke another record for donations.
Dennis Brammen from PietSmiet told us how streamers manage to top each other every year.
“Friendly Fire” has made an amazing development.
The annual donation stream is hosted by some of the most famous YouTubers and streamers in Germany, including PietSmiet, Gronkh and Pandorya.
The event took place for the first time in 2015.
At that time, 125,000 euros were donated as part of the fundraising campaign.
With “Friendly Fire 7”, a total of around 1.8 million euros were collected within twelve hours - around 1.3 million through direct donations and the rest through merchandise sales.
This enabled “Friendly Fire” to collect more donations every year.
We spoke to Dennis Brammen (Br4mm3n) from PietSmiet about the reasons for the great development of the event.
"Friendly Fire 7": Authenticity and authenticity are extremely important
Dennis Brammen explains to us that one of the main reasons for the great success is
authenticity
: "I think a very important point is
that
what we do that day
is simply" true "
, including the mistakes." It gets there and again suggest that the audience doesn't like something, but then the streamers react spontaneously and move on to the next point.
“It just happens and then people have to go through it.
At the same time, however, it is real because it is also real.
Nothing is played
. "
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"Friendly Fire": Donation stream is even broadcast in bars
This authenticity is what distinguishes PietSmiet and Co. in their normal streams and is certainly one of the reasons why they have been able to build up such a large fan community over the years.
These are now not only networked virtually.
Fans also meet in real life
and watch streams together on the couch or organize their own small events.
“I think it's great that we created such a get-together.
I know about a bar in Cologne, they have set up a television there and they
watch it all over the bar,
”says Brammen.
"Friendly Fire 7": Where do the donations end up?
The collected donations are passed
on to different organizations
, including the Friends of Cancer Children eV Cologne or Hanseatic Help eV and many others.
PietSmiet and Co. ensure that the money ends up in the right places.
Dennis Brammen gives a specific example: “We have in Weeze, for example, that's where we originally come from, [...] we built a barn for the zoo [...].
We then simply visited the barn after it had been set up. "
"Friendly Fire 8": The date has already been set
The donation stream will also take place next year.
The date for "Friendly Fire 8" is December 3, 2022
. If the campaign develops as it has in recent years, PietSmiet & Co. could possibly earn the
2 million euros
crack - but cracking any records is not the goal at all, as Dennis Brammen explains: “Of course it's always nice when the sum increases. If you then already have more money to donate, that is of course a good thing. Nevertheless, I think you shouldn't approach such a competition and with too sporty ambition. It's a charity event. One should not underestimate the sums that flow, even if one “fails”. I think that's very important. ”But given the huge amount of annual donations, there can be no question of a failure.
The people behind the scenes also make a big contribution to this, making sure that the stream runs smoothly.
This includes an eleven-person recording team, producers, 50 volunteers and many others.
"I think they usually get too little attention, so it is important to me that people are not forgotten," says Brammen.
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