BrodeBickel958

The FTC has handed down an advisory opinion that might have dire consequences for firms that employee people who are involved in blogging and market those companies products or solutions even though blogging. According to the FTC, this could hold accurate even if these employees are undertaking this blogging on their individual time and even if business management has no idea what is going on. The FTC advises that such a blogger must make readers aware of his or her connection with the organization whose merchandise or solutions he or she is endorsing.

The FTC has concluded in this advisory opinion that these actions may possibly constitute deceptive business practices in violation of the FTC Act. The FTC Act sets forth a deceptive company practice as becoming:

1. A practice that represents or omits material data that probably would mislead reasonable shoppers under the situations and,

two. A practice that includes a representation or omission that is of material value to buyers

The FTC continually and regularly has identified that a seller's failure to disclose a relationship that would materially impact a consumer's opinion is deceptive.

In the case of the advisory opinion, the particular concern was the weight that a customer will naturally give to a sponsored endorser. The FTC Endorsement Guides set forth:

(W)hen there exists a connection amongst the endorser and the seller of the advertised item that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement . . . such connection need to be completely disclosed.

A connection is deemed to exist in most situations when the endorser (here, a blogger) is paid by the business responsible for offering the solution or service or when an endorser has a close business association (or a relative with such an association) with such a firm. With out a doubt, according to the FTC, employees of a company have such a close organization association and their connection have to be made public when they make any endorsement.

The bottom line is that it seems organizations and firms have a duty to pro-actively warn their workers about the perils of making endorsements by means of blogging when their connection of that company enterprise is not produced public. In a similar vein, if the employee is producing adverse statements about a competitor, his or her association with his or her employers should be made public to keep away from violating FTC regulations. sox act compliance