Who's surprised by the FTC blogger guidelines?
Business journalists will probably not be surprised at the wording for the new Federal Trade Commission final guidelines for bloggers and celebrity endorsements.
Business journalists are subject to the strictest rules of disclosure among all journalists. And we should be. And sending free products to consumers hoping that they feel good about your company and talk about the product is hardly a new practice.
But the new FTC guidelines will come as a shock to some.
Here's Brian Solis of TechCrunch 's take on the how FTC guidelines spell out how advertisers need to act to disclose connections between a company and the people endorsing its product. They contain clear guidelines and consequences for violation: up to $11,000 per incident. They were last updated in 1980, the Ice Age in terms of citizen journalism.
Where things get dicey is when known bloggers are targeted because of their large numbers of loyal readers. There has been lots of discussion in the past few months about bloggers being targeted by and benefiting from advertisers. There is also a lot of talk about what makes a blogger a journalist and is there any difference.
Are bloggers subject to the same conflict of interest standards as journalists? Is disclosure enough or should bloggers not take any sort of product in exchange for reviews.
I heard one blogger talk about accepting products but choosing to not write about those products if she does not them. I guess that keeps her from turning off the marketing folks and does keep the products rolling in because she's so positive. But it doesn't help me understand her motivation when she Tweets about driving with her family in their Prius to Taco Bell after watching a Disney movie.
The FTC guidelines are rules for the companies to follow. But the fallout will become evident I think as we see more and more Tweets with the phrase (client) in them.
It is going to be the “material connections” segment of the new guidelines that will create most interest, uproar, concern.. we'll see.
The new guidelines include examples of:
' "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.'
I've already heard rumblings about Big Brother.
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