Sign In
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Monday 2nd July 2018

Regulating influencer marketing – what next?

By Sarah Burns, Managing Director of Prizeology,

We published some research earlier this year that created quite a buzz. A large part of our business is focused on compliance and regulation so we wanted to analyse advertising regulations around the growing area of influencer marketing to understand what needed to change.

The results made interesting reading particularly the finding that 71% of the public didn’t know that influencer marketing is regulated. You can find details of the report at the foot of this page.*

I can’t say whether public awareness has improved in the last few months as a result of the findings, but based on my own social media interactions I do sense a greater willingness on the part of influencers themselves to disclose their commercial relationships to followers.

That slight shift may be partly due to the fact that the ASA has recognised there is an issue with influencer marketing and is carrying out its own research into what the public thinks about it. I applaud this, because influencer marketing, and digital marketing in general, are fast-moving areas and a regulatory framework that was fit for purpose even a couple of years ago is no longer adequate. In fact, had the ASA failed to take the initiative, it would have been in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant.

In its call for evidence, the ASA said it was interested in the level and type of commercial influence over editorial content which people expect to be informed about ‘through an ad label or other method’. At present, the only ASA-approved way of indicating influence is #Ad and the ‘other method’ reference suggests the ASA may be prepared to extend the ways in which influencers can signal a commercial relationship.

If that’s true I think it’s good news. From gifting a product in the hope that an influencer will say something nice or post a photo of themselves clutching it, through to parting with a substantial fee in return for an influencer playing an integral part in a closely controlled promotional campaign across multiple channels, there are many ways in which brands work with influencers – and #ad alone no longer cuts it.

#Ad is a blunt instrument that doesn’t reflect the subtleties and nuances of brand/influencer relationships, so what we need is a larger set of hashtags to choose, from so that we can come closer to representing the complexities of those commercial relationships. Those hashtags need to be intuitive and obvious and, of course, there needs to be an accompanying online and offline campaign to make the public aware of what their usage means.

The research we undertook also found that 49% of the public weren’t familiar with the hashtags that are currently used, so that’s obviously going to require a considerable comms effort, but beyond hashtags, we also need a regulatory framework which acknowledges that different platforms have different features and work in different ways. The CAP Code states that people should be informed upfront that what they’re viewing is an ad and that seems right and reasonable to me.

However, maybe that message should appear in one form on Twitter, where characters are still in short supply and better use could perhaps be made of symbols or emoticons, and in another form on an Instagram story where an opening screen or flash that doesn’t compromise the content could be made mandatory, or perhaps the ASA could formally accept that Instagram’s ‘paid partnership’ feature is an acceptable label for paid-for content.

What I’m saying is that context is important. If we see a fashion shot blown up on the side of a building we recognise this as a billboard ad because of the location. We understand that temporary use of that space can be bought and whatever fills it is unlikely to be anything other than an ad.

On the other hand, in an interiors magazine we might confuse a spread of product photos with editorial content, so it’s flagged as a ‘promotional feature’ or ‘advertising promotion’ to indicate that the space was paid for.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on the intricacies of every aspect of every social media platform, but the ASA needs to be and, as it recognises, it needs to consult with users, because not only are they the ones being influenced, but they really understand how those platforms work.

Of course, some might argue that much of what influencers do isn’t ‘advertising’ in the sense that we’ve known it for several decades, but to my mind the principles that inform regulation of traditional advertising certainly need to be apply to influencer marketing. In other words, somebody needs to regulate this area, because it’s a question of protecting the public, and I’m glad the ASA is willing to step up to the plate.

In fact, the research found that brand perception improves for 60% of the public when there is transparency about brand/influencer commercial relationships, so I believe disclosure is in the interests of the industry anyway.

Future influencer marketing regulation may not need to be so literal, but right now, when influencer marketing is still in its infancy, we need that transparency. The ASA is faced with a major challenge, but I hope the solutions it comes up with are bold and imaginative, because they need to be.

Sarah Burns is the Managing Director of Prizeology, an agency that specialises in prize promotions. Sarah’s particular area of expertise is compliance and industry best practice in the fields of prize draws and promotions including influencer marketing. She works with brands and businesses to run fair and compliant prize promotions both in UK and globally preventing them from breaking regulations and reducing the chances of both financial and reputational damage.

*The Prizeology report, Under the Influence: UK Consumer Attitudes to Social Media Influencer Marketing, was based on 2015 interviews conducted between 30 January and 2 February 2018 with a nationally representative UK audience using an online methodology. Respondents were a minimum of 18 years old and quotas were placed on age, gender and region to ensure an accurate representation of the UK public demographic. The research was carried out by Vitreous World on behalf of Prizeology. It can be downloaded from https://www.prizeology.com/whitepaper/influencer/.

Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash