Few things in this brave new world of social media remain unchanged for long, and recently Internet practices in the UK took another significant shift with the introduction of new legislation under the snappy banner of “Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations.” Essentially, the legislation puts in place several significant new protections for consumers and, in effect, imposes new restrictions on marketers including:

• Further clamping down on spam
• Outlawing the use of “unclear advertorials”
• Prohibiting direct advertising/marketing to children to buy products or to persuade their parents to buy products for them (wisely called “pester power”)
• Prohibiting the use of the word “free” if the customer has to pay anything other than the cost of responding or delivery

The legislation has important implications for marketers and advertisers in the social media arena as it also outlaws the following type of practices:

• Falsely advertising on social media sites
• Creating fake blogs (”flogging”)
• Pretending that a blogger is a consumer when the blogger is not (”seeding,” or is being paid to pose as a consumer).

Therefore, practices such as these and others including “astroturfing” and “sock puppets” which also mislead consumers may be illegal. Breaching these regulations could lead to fines of up to £5000 for companies and similar fines and/or up to two years in prison for individual directors, senior managers or persons purporting to act as such who are guilty of “consenting, conniving or negligently” breaching the regs.

However, reputable advertisers should never have been engaging in these type of activities anyway - transparency with your customers, clients and prospective customers is always the recommended practice. These type of activities not only damage the brand if they get found out (think of Sony’s “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” fake blog or the “Wal-Marting Across America” fiasco or Coca-Cola’s “The Zero Movement”) but they also do further damage to the industry. Think of the irreparable damage done to email marketing by the spam industry.

The benefits that the marketing industry can gain from social media will only be realized if everyone involved adopts responsible practices. Whilst the legislation might not stop those determined to abuse the system, we all have a part to play (call it self-policing or whatever you like) in ensuring that advertisers lead the way in being transparent, legal and honest in their communications.

Tags: advertorials, astroturfing, flogs, pester power, regulations, sock puppets, spam, UK