Transparency Legislation UK Word Of Mouth Marketing
Good coverage of new UK legislation that cracks down on word of mouth
marketing being done sans transparency.
U.K. Cracks Down on Word-of-Mouth With Tough Restrictions Coming Legislation Makes It a Criminal Offense for Brands to Falsely Represent Themselves as Consumers (By Emma Hall)
The rules make it an offense to blog, use brand ambassadors or seed viral ads while "falsely representing oneself as a consumer." They also apply to bloggers who fail to disclose they have accepted money to write about a product.
This is just the start of many conversations that will take place around identity and reputation online.
This is a good move and will help bring to light snake oil marketing and black-op operations done under the guise of marketing.
In the mid 90s when I was working with artists and music online, one artist management team thought it a good idea to go over to other peoples' bulletin boards and post about their band as fans.
I warned them at the time that nine year olds can see clearly through these type of marketing charades.
It turns out one noticed right away and said, "if you and the band you love so much are so cool, then what are you doing on my bulletin board telling me so?"
A long way to say that operating without transparency and weighing in with alleged authority on something requires reputation which comes from a strong online identity and that is in turn based on being clear with who you are. Transparency.
We have many accounts online we use to track assets around projects or accounts on social media sites to post around projects. All are clearly marked as such.
Legislation is always the last phase in something that meteorically rises and then morphs and grows though various phases until it needs to be roped back in.
If anyone in the legitimate digital agency business is even playing in such a sandbox it would be surprising as these were lessons learned long ago. But seeing such legislation in the UK makes you wonder why common-sense needs to be legislated. You would think ROI alone would have killed such behavior.
U.K. Cracks Down on Word-of-Mouth With Tough Restrictions Coming Legislation Makes It a Criminal Offense for Brands to Falsely Represent Themselves as Consumers (By Emma Hall)
The rules make it an offense to blog, use brand ambassadors or seed viral ads while "falsely representing oneself as a consumer." They also apply to bloggers who fail to disclose they have accepted money to write about a product.
This is just the start of many conversations that will take place around identity and reputation online.
This is a good move and will help bring to light snake oil marketing and black-op operations done under the guise of marketing.
In the mid 90s when I was working with artists and music online, one artist management team thought it a good idea to go over to other peoples' bulletin boards and post about their band as fans.
I warned them at the time that nine year olds can see clearly through these type of marketing charades.
It turns out one noticed right away and said, "if you and the band you love so much are so cool, then what are you doing on my bulletin board telling me so?"
A long way to say that operating without transparency and weighing in with alleged authority on something requires reputation which comes from a strong online identity and that is in turn based on being clear with who you are. Transparency.
We have many accounts online we use to track assets around projects or accounts on social media sites to post around projects. All are clearly marked as such.
Legislation is always the last phase in something that meteorically rises and then morphs and grows though various phases until it needs to be roped back in.
If anyone in the legitimate digital agency business is even playing in such a sandbox it would be surprising as these were lessons learned long ago. But seeing such legislation in the UK makes you wonder why common-sense needs to be legislated. You would think ROI alone would have killed such behavior.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Transparency Legislation UK Word Of Mouth Marketing.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog2.wiredset.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/61
Leave a comment