The Federal Trade Commission just voted unanimously to approve new rules for advertising, testimonials, and celebrity endorsements. In short, the new rules hold companies and people accountable for their claims. Previously, you were just required to put in a “results not typical” disclaimer, and now disclosure has to be made in the advertisement. You can find the full text of the changes here and they give plenty of examples, so it’s not the boring read most government documents are.
In a nutshell, if someone gives a blogger a free product to do a review, they have to disclose it. If some expert gets paid to say how great a product is, they actually have to use it. It wouldn’t affect say, an announcer who’s reading a script, but it really affects the business opportunity industry.
For example during the Jeff Paul Internet Millions infomercial “Shawn C.” is actually Shawn Casey who was a well known marketer before they met. He gets up and says he makes millions of dollars with the Jeff Paul system but if you go to shawncasey.com there isn’t even mention of it. He endorses Ewen Chias product. Under these more strict rules I think a lot of infomercials are going to have to be reshot or edited. We’ll see how it all plays out but it’s progress in the area of consumer protection.
Merchant Accounts
March 29th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
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March 31st, 2010 at 7:58 am
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March 31st, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I love your take on this, could not agree more.