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Bulletin: 21/5
Batch: 274
Reference: 37288
Product: Clothing / Footwear
Advertiser: Vavavoom
Influencer: Lorna Spaine
Agency:
Medium: Online – Influencer’s Social Media Account
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The posts by the influencer pictured the influencer wearing the item by the brand and stated the following:
Post 1:
“@vavoom_ie
Swipe up for jacket
See More”
Post 2:
“Yo @vavavoom_ie Jacket linked on stories. LORNA10 for 10% off.”
The complainant considered the influencer to be posting new outfits on her stories and page with discounts and links without declaring whether these were advertisements, whether she was paid, or being in a partnership with the brand. He noted that after some time these posts were edited to include Paid Partnership or #ad.
The brand confirmed the receipt of the complaint and said they had informed their influencers to include hashtags like ad and collab for all paid content. They said they would ensure nothing like this happened again.
The influencer provided a screenshot from an email to the brand regarding needing her branded content to be approved by them first to appear above her content. She indicated that this was due to operational challenges using the platform and once it was fixed, the banner was added above the image. She provided images of the posts in question with ‘Paid Partnership’ displayed above each of the posts.
Complaint Upheld.
The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. They noted the comments by the influencer in relation to the posts needing approval prior to being tagged as paid partnership. They considered, however, that where content linked to a brand’s website where consumers could purchase the product depicted, and a paid partnership was involved, such content was marketing communication. Therefore, a clear disclosure must be given in the content prior to the content being posted.
The Committee noted that in this case a disclosure had been included later, however it was not clearly visible at the time the posts went live.
In the circumstances, the Committee considered that the posts were in breach of Code sections 3.31, 3.32, 4.1 and 4.4.ACTION REQUIRED:
The Complaints Committee reminded the parties involved to ensure that all marketing communications was clearly tagged as such, so that consumers knew immediately that advertising was involved. As the posts had been amended to include the appropriate tag, there is no further action required in this case.