What Does the FTC Have To Do With Marketing?

Everything, apparently.

With the start of the New Year, I always look for fresh connections. That’s where the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) comes in.

A colleague sent me an article about the FTC’s ruling on the use of Twitter, which led me to a search for what else the FTC was interested in.  Turns out, a whole lot that marketers care about in the online and social media world.

Over the past year, the FTC has:

• Stopped SnapChat from misrepresenting the disappearance of those pics and posts (yikes!)
• Sued Google, Apple and Amazon over making it too easy for children to buy things through in-app purchases
• Ruled that it is illegal to create a Twitter campaign about a product without clearly indicating your affiliation with said tweet

Here’s an example of the right and wrong way to tweet about a product you are affiliated with:

Wrong way:

Right way, leading me to believe you never want to be affiliated with a product about which you are tweeting:

• Warned about the dangerous lack of privacy inherent in all these devices we have connected to the internet that are taking our pulse, weighing us, telling us how much we sleep and when we don’t, etc.

That’s not a bad year for a government agency that most marketers are not even aware of. As a consumer, I’m very happy we have an agency whose job it is to protect me. As a marketer, I realize I need to be aware of the FTC’s rulings. To keep on the right side of the FTC, please take a look at this handy guide of Advertising and Marketing Internet Rules of the Road.