Earlier this week, the FTC provided some additional guidelines on sponsored posts. The gist was this: If you fail to disclose your connection between advertisers and endorsers you could be looking at a fine of up to $11,000 per incident.
But it seems those additional guidelines may have been misinterpreted, according to a report yesterday by PRNewser. Quoting Richard Cleland, assistant director of the FTC, PRNewser reports:
“The root problem here is that reports that there is a monetary penalty for violating these guidelines is untrue. The FTC does not have the authority to impose a fine for a violation to the FTC act.” “We have never brought a case against a consumer endorser and we’ve never brought a case against somebody simply for failure to disclose a material connection.” “Where we have brought cases, there are other issues involved, not only failing to disclose a material connection but also making other misrepresentations about a product, a serious product like a health product or something like that. We have brought those cases but not against the consumer endorser, we have brought those cases against the advertiser that was behind it. If people think that the FTC is going to issue them a citation for $11,000 because they failed to disclose that they got a free box of Pampers, that’s not true. That’s not going to happen today, not ever.”
We’re not sure if that makes it all better, but it certainly seems that the guidelines have less “teeth” (see toon on right).
As we’ve written before, we think it would be best if the FTC minds its own business.
Have a good weekend!
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