Unless you have been living under a rock or on an extended vacation (in which case we are jealous), you have undoubtedly heard ramblings about the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guides that took effect on December 1, 2009, regarding endorsements and testimonials in advertising.

This is the first time the guides have been updated since 1980. You remember 1980, right? Ronald Reagan was elected President. Mount St. Helens erupted. John Lennon was assassinated. There was no Internet or e-mail. No cell phones. In fact, it would still be a few more years before network and cable TV experienced its advances with the creation of Fox Network, MTV, CNN and The Weather Channel.

Arguably the explosive growth of social media, the endless amount of broadcast and digital infomercials with questionable consumer testimonials along with the increasing practice of using celebrities and their media status to promote your company, product or service contributed to the need to revisit endorsement and testimonial guides.

This multi-part series examines various aspects of the guidelines relevant to marketers and their companies.

• Heather Woolford, Associate Director of PR, provides a top-level overview of the new FTC guides – particularly as it relates to social media, blogger outreach and street team marketing.
• Al Yukna, Chief Digital Officer, weighs in on how the guides necessitate the need for your company to create (or update) its social media policies to ensure employees are compliant. Before you say, no thanks, keep in mind that your company is now liable for any false or misleading statements made by your employees.
• Wondering if endorsements and testimonials are really the way to go with these new guides? Dan Collins, Director of Strategic Planning and Research, provides a compelling argument to keep using this tactic as a way to build trust among current or potential consumers.

Part 1: Advertisers

Transparency and monitoring are arguably the two biggest elements of the new guides that took effect December 1, 2009. The explosive growth of social media — and blogs in particular — has been one of the driving forces behind this update. That and the fact the guides have not been updated since 1980…

What’s the Fuss About?

• The new guidelines address more than just endorsements by celebrities. Guidance is now in place for endorsements by consumers, experts and organizations.

• Disclosure of any material connections between the endorser and advertiser must be made – including non-monetary items such as product. This is the change receiving the most media attention as well as criticism and confusion among bloggers.

-Just as it has been a common PR practice to send product samples to a traditional media reporter in order to review the product, many advertisers have extended this tactic to the blogosphere.

-As of December 1, 2009, bloggers or consumers who write about a free product sent to them (good or bad) must disclose this. Persons who purchase the product with their own money and write a glowing review are not subject to this guideline.

-The question remains is $50 worth of a food or beverage product really enough to sway a positive review? What about providing a year-long lease and insurance to a blogger to drive and talk about the newest mini-van? Or paying a person a set amount of money every time he/she tweets about your product?

-Unfortunately the new guides do not specifically state a minimum value of the product so most advertisers should err on the side of safety and ask the free product or service be disclosed by the recipient.

-Another important factor pointed out in the guides is not just the amount of the free product or service, but also the frequency of which you send it to this person.

• This disclosure must be made across all mediums. This includes the ever-popular Twitter platform which has a 140-word character limit; grassroots outreach; and even street team marketing.

-Many professional bloggers are developing their own ways to meet this requirement while still having enough characters left to tweet something of value. Melanie Notkin, CEO and Founder of SavvyAuntie.com has taken to adding a “SP” for “sponsored post” on the end of any sponsored tweet.

• The burden lies on the advertiser to make sure that these material connections are disclosed. Essentially this means the advertiser must make sure that any endorser is told what can — and equally important — what cannot be said.

-Yes…you must spell out what cannot be said because under the new guides, the advertiser could be liable if the endorser makes a false or misleading claim about a product or service.

• Education alone is not enough under the new guides. Advertisers also must have a system in place to monitor what these endorsers are saying about the company and its product(s) to catch and attempt to correct any errors or inaccuracies.

• And then there is the case of employee endorsements – whether full-time or part-time employees or even college interns. The FTC has set guidelines in place to make sure any employees posting comments to a blog or forum, tweeting about a product, saying something on Facebook, calling a radio station or engaging in street team activities disclose the fact that he/she works for the company that makes the product or service.

As with any new guidelines or rules, a lot of companies are still determining exactly how this impacts their advertising or public relations plans. At the same time, leaders in the blogosphere are taking matters into their own hands having started the Blog with Integrity effort.

Over the next few weeks, we are likely to see media stories about whether the new guides are impacting the use of celebrity or consumer endorsers and if companies are still sending product to and/or paying bloggers.

Ultimately each advertiser will determine what, if any, changes will be made to company practices. But as for me…I’m still going to continue to tell my PR Clients that the benefits of reaching out to bloggers and other key influencers is still worth it — even with the new disclosure statements.

There’s no shame…just a little vanity. And it turns out, I’m not alone.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly half of Internet users have done the same - up from just 22% in 2002. In fact, enough people are doing this that Google recently introduced a feature called a “Google profile” to tap into this.

As marketers, we’ve all likely devoted time to online searches about our companies, brands and products. We likely subscribe to all sorts of services that monitor print, broadcast, online and even social media chatter about our company and brands.

But when was the last time you Googled or surfed the Web for information about your key spokesperson(s)? What about your C-level executives or board members? Or your paid endorsers?

The reality is the people whom you choose to surround and support your brand often become personifications of your brand. Are they using your products in their everyday lives or just when they are shooting a commercial for you? Is your CEO going on national TV to announce a series of layoffs and then driving around town in his limited edition Rolls-Royce or Bentley?

So go ahead…Google yourself. Just make sure you follow that up with some online searches and social media searches of your spokespersons, executives, endorsers and other key influencers of your brand.

As a working mom, my cell phone is my connection to nearly all my everyday communication needs  - work e-mails, personal e-mails to communicate with my children’s ( ages 7 and 8 ) teachers and arrange play dates, update my Facebook status and also check out what my friends are up to on Facebook. I also use my commute time to return personal and work phone calls all while coordinating my daily car pool routine and maybe some weekend details with friends.

Initially, I thought the sudden expiration of my cell phone would be a good thing. I thought it would allow me to get back in touch with the “old school” forms of communication (i.e., landlines, snail mail) and make me less reliant on my cell phone. Boy, was I wrong!

Over the course of one week, here are just a few of the hurdles I ran into:

• Missed a Facebook update from a friend that said her husband had an emergency appendectomy. (This was the only form of communication she used to tell everyone about her husband’s emergency surgery.)
• Hit bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Beltway and had no way to tell my husband to avoid the Beltway or contact my childrens’ after school provider to tell her I was running late.
• Missed the text message from a friend that my son needed me to bring an extra water bottle to his soccer game.
• Missed the text message from my sister-in-law telling me the details of my niece’s hospital stay.
• And basically had no clue what meeting I had coming up or in what room at work without mobile access to my work calendar.

While this very unfortunate situation definitely re-affirmed my complete dependence on my cell phone, I also came to grips with it. With all the criticism about how disconnected we are in our digital world, my forced digital diet taught me the exact opposite. In today’s digital world where life moves at the speed of light, digital and mobile technology gives us more touch points with friends and families than we’ve ever had access to before.

So the question now remains, what digital touch points are you missing in your marketing plan?

If the print ad wasn’t bad enough, the Always Web site left me embarrassed to admit I’ve been a loyal Always brand user for 20+ years. The “How It Works” section where visitors can click on the sparkles on the pad to “see the magic right before your eyes” is creepy. The video with the same red-haired, white-clad magician showing how the magical pad works is weird. And the 3-D portion of the Web site — which shows how to print out an image of a white magician hat, hold it in front of a Web cam, move the hat around and watch a bunny jump out — made me think I was on a Web site advertising a magician for my child’s upcoming 8^th birthday party rather than a Web site promoting a pad!

Granted, the bar hasn’t been set too high with ads for feminine care products. They all seem to have the same conventional images: blue liquid being poured onto a pad to demonstrate its superior absorbability or women confidently running and jumping while proudly wearing white-colored clothes thanks to their tampon.

So it got me thinking, has anyone advertising pads or tampons broken from these traditional symbols in a way that would cause women to re-evaluate what they think about one of these brands? Has anyone discovered a meaningful way to emotionally connect their product to their target audience?

With an “F” from me on the Always campaign, I sought out another feminine care product that got it right. My pick is Tampax Pearl tampons and their “Outsmart Mother Nature” campaign.

The “Outsmart Mother Nature” campaign cleverly uses relatable humor to connect to women on an emotional level. This is done via scenarios where a sinister looking Mother Nature dressed in a suit hand delivers her red-wrapped monthly gift to an unsuspecting woman on vacation and in the middle of a romantic dream.

Tampax Waylei’d

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3kugHmbNgQ

Tampax Pearl Romance

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ZQdDwncCc

The execution also works in other mediums. On the Tampax homepage Mother Nature appears from behind a copy box and sets down her red-wrapped monthly gift. They even took an unscripted, grassroots approach with Mother Nature delivering her monthly gift to unsuspecting women walking down the street.

Mother Nature Best Deliveries

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDML6J94Nc

And while the “Outsmart Mother Nature” campaign is relatively new, the willingness of Tampax to use humor as an emotional connection is something the brand consistently has done — even as far back as these hilarious ads featuring a Mariachi band and period dance.

Tampax Commercial (Mariachi)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgsZXwIL_-s

Tampax Dance

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-4APMv2QKo

What are your thoughts — do you see the value of using a symbol of re-evaluation within this category? What about humor as an emotional connection? Or unlike me, can you see the “magic” behind the Always campaign?

Not anymore according to Inside Facebook, an independent blog site which tracks Facebook trends for both developers and marketers. According to user data released on July 6, 2009, the number of adults ages 35 to 65 logging onto Facebook is growing in record numbers.

Below are a few highlights:

• 30 percent of U.S. Facebook users are between the ages of 35- 54. That’s more than 20 million men and women you could reach in this age demographic.
• The number of U.S. Facebook users ages 45-54 has more than tripled in the last six months to a record 7.7 million active users.
• In the 30 days prior to this data being released, the number of U.S. Facebook users that are over 35 years old grew by nearly 1.5 million in each of these age categories: 34-44, 45-54 and 55-65. This is a trend many expect to continue to see.

The numbers don’t lie. Social networking sites are no longer just about keeping up with friends and family. People are using Facebook to search for jobs, get recommendations for vacations and products and even to foster cross-generational communication with children and grandchildren.

The reality is that if you are targeting Gen Xers and/or Baby Boomers, Facebook is becoming more and more of a viable communications tool for your marketing communications mix. Are you ready? Contact us.

Sacrifice the pursuit of secondary communications objectives until your primary objective has been achieved.

Andy loves any and every sport, but the one constant in his life has been baseball. As he got older he also started playing football, wrestling and most recently basketball. He wasn’t always the best player at each sport, but he played with gusto and embraced the team aspect.

A few months into his freshman year Andy came to his parents with a big announcement: he wasn’t going to play in any winter sport. His reason was shockingly insightful and wise beyond his years: it would take away from the time he could spend training to be on the high school baseball team. His high school has a highly competitive baseball team and word around the halls was that only one-third of all the boys trying out for the baseball team would make the cut.

He sacrificed playing basketball so he could focus on his baseball skills and game. Andy surmised that his time spent in basketball practices could be better spent in agility training and pitching lessons. He could still shoot hoops for fun with his friends, after all.

Turns out Andy’s trade off to give up basketball in pursuit of making the high school baseball team was the right choice. After a week plus of try outs, Andy was one of just a few freshmen to make the team.

So the next time you are facing either a shrinking marketing budget or the reality that your total marketing budget is far below that of your competitors, think of the wisdom of a 14-year-old. Examine ALL your marketing priorities. What is your highest marketing priority? What activity or expense can you trade off for this quarter or this year in order to achieve this goal first?