The FTC’s Endorsement Guide

The world of Influencer advertising or endorsement is not new, it has always existed in all forms of media, however all social and any type of Influencer marketing must adhere, by law, to certain disclosure guidelines.

As a US based company, VITY adheres to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) ruling, which outlines good practices and can be found here:
The FTC’s Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking

If you are, or are looking to be involved in Influencer marketing (either as the Advertiser or the Influencer) we ask you to read the FTC guidelines and understand them.

For anyone outside the US, the FTC guidelines should be a good basis for covering your disclosure responsibilities, but VITY advises that you refer to specific laws and guidelines for your own country or region. As an entity active in social or Influencer marketing, we expect you to be responsible and aware of the medium and context of what you are undertaking.

If you do not disclose your paid or sponsored campaigns, you may be blocked from using VITY and we may push to take any action available to us in order to reclaim any damages done to VITY as a result of your activities.

So what should I do?

What this boils down to is the "basic truth-in-advertising principle that endorsements must be honest and not misleading" - FTC.

When a campaign is performed, regardless of the channel it is published through, the post or activity must always be acknowledged as a paid/sponsored post. Recommendations for doing this are:

• Tag your post with #ad or some other text to indicate that is is paid for or sponsored in some way.
• If your post is a video or other form of recording that you can't tag, you should clearly state that it is (or is in part) paid for or sponsored.

As with all forms of Influencer marketing we heavily recommend that this be done in-keeping with the Influencer's preference, personality, and comfort, it does not need to be a complicated legal statement.

Examples (as per the FTC) are:

• "Company X gave me this product to try . . . ."
• "Company X sent me [name of product] to try, and I think it's great"
• "Some of the products I'm going to use in this video were sent to me by their manufacturers."

If you have any questions about this, or anything related to handling your Campaigns, please contact us here: Contact Us