The FTC and Me: How to Play Fair When You’re Getting Paid
*Knock-Knock* Who’s there? It’s the FTC, and they’re not happy, because you just posted about how much you love your new Waist-Training-Sustainable-Gluten-Free Boyfriend Jeans and you failed to tell your followers that it was a sponsored post. Ok, maybe this scenario is made up, but what’s real is how much disclosure matters in online advertising, and knowing your part to play. Being real is important to your followers, just like it’s important to you.
Wait, how serious is the FTC about this?
In March of 2015, 50 fashion Instagrammers were paid by Lord & Taylor to feature the same dress and post on the same weekend. As Adweek reports, they effectively flooded a corner of Instagram with a singular message. It was a runaway success; the posts received on average upwards of 5,000 likes and the dress sold out almost instantly. Just one problem: not a single post made mention of the fact Lord & Taylor had provided the dress and compensated the Influencer. Flash-forward through a year of headache, and Lord & Taylor reached a settlement with the FTC, with the knowledge that a second slip-up would result in a $16,000 per-violation, per-day fine.
And that’s not an isolated incident. It’s like attorney Ron Urbach told Advertising Age, “There are going to be more issues in the future, not less. The FTC has made it known that there are more cases to come. So advertisers and agencies be on notice — you could be next.” Fun!
Now about those guidelines…
The FTC’s helpful hints for how to stay legal when you’re posting sponsored content are spread across two documents: one is a brisk 53 pages-long and the other is an easy-breezy 23 pages. Phew.
If you’re like us, you have actual things to do, and killer content to create. You just need the Why and the How of disclosing a sponsored post and you’ll get to it. What we’ve put together shouldn’t be confused for legal advice (because it’s absolutely not. Hi, lawyers 🙋 🏼). But what we’ve tried to do is glean the highlights from the FTC’s Disclosure Guidelines and give you some practical hints on how to stay on their good side.
Ok. But why should I care?
Your followers care. On some level, the follower/Creator relationship is based on trust. Your followers like your point of view, and they trust that the content you’re providing came from your brain. To avoid tarnishing that implicit trust, you need to be upfront when there’s compensation involved. Disclosing that you’re working with a brand tells your followers you care about being real with them. It also reinforces to them that you’re legit: you’re an authority in your field. You’re a pro who came to kick butt and disclose ads.
Brands you work with care. As far as the FTC is concerned, a Brand is ultimately responsible for making sure you disclose that you’re working together on a sponsored post. When you submit a caption to a Brand for approval on our platform, including a clear, visible disclosure, it lets a Brand know that you’re a freakin’ professional, and you respect their time. You’re the sort of person who they’d like to work with again in the future.
So how do I do this right?
Glad you asked. We summed up the nitty gritty of the FTC’s disclosure guidelines with two big questions to ask yourself when you’re writing a caption for a sponsored post:
- Is it clear & conspicuous?
- Is it substantiated & honest?
Let’s break those down a little bit. The language in your caption about the relationship between you and a Brand needs to be clear & conspicuous.
Clear: There are no magic words or hashtag you have to use to indicate it’s a sponsored post, but you can’t beat around the bush. Some easy examples are phrases like “I’m working with @[brand] to…”, or “I’ve partnered with @[brand]…”, or “In collaboration with @[brand].” However you want to say it, just be clear that you’re working with a brand to give your followers something beautiful.✨
Another aspect of being clear with your disclosure is making sure everybody can understand it (and we mean everybody). Using a hashtag like “#sp” or “#spon” might be cute for you, but using full words like “#ad” or “#sponsored” makes a heck of a lot more sense to Gary in Idaho.
Conspicuous: Subtlety is great if you’re trying to win an Oscar, but not if you’re trying to disclose that your post has a sponsor. Don’t hide your hashtag in the middle of a bouquet of tags, and don’t stick it way down at the bottom of your caption/meaningful personal essay. Also think about where your followers are seeing this post. For example, if it’s a video on Youtube, make sure you say it in the caption and in your vid (not just your caption). If it’s on Instagram, remember that if your caption runs long, your disclosure might be hidden behind the fold. 🙈
Substantiated: This is super important if you’re talking about specific benefits of a product you enjoy. If you make a claim about health or the effectiveness of a product, it has to be backed up with research that the Brand has given you. Stay out of the snake oil business.
Honest: You have to be up front with your followers. If you had incredible results with a weight loss tea, but the Brand has told you most people can expect a more modest outcome, you have to let your followers know that too. What you don’t say is just as important as what you do say. Make sure you’re not implying something that you can’t back up.
Got it. Let’s pretend I need a really specific example.
Here you go. The FTC offers the text of this fictional sponsored tweet from an even more fictional actress as an example of clear, substantiated disclosure:
“Juli Starz” here manages to get a clear & conspicuous disclosure that makes a substantiated & honest claim in under 140 characters. Frankly, she had 17 characters left over to add a link, but hey Juli: your life, your choices. If Juli can do it in under 140 characters, you can definitely do it in your Instagram caption, Youtube description, blog post etc. It’s not as daunting as it sounds. 💚
That’s it?
That’s it. If a friend kept recommending a movie to you, you’d want to know if they were moonlighting as the movie’s producer, right? Bottom line: your followers deserve to know the relationships behind the scenes of your posts, and you deserve to work in a marketplace that values honesty and fairness. The (modified) Golden Rule holds true; just treat your followers like you’d wanna be treated. 💚
