AGCM

A year after its first moral suasion, the Autorità Garante per la Concorrenza e il Mercato (Italian Competition Authority, ICA) has again taken action on influencer marketing on social media.
This phenomenon is increasingly growing in size and has become a widespread, well-established means of communication. Bloggers or so-called influencers (i.e. widely followed social media personalities) support or endorse specific brands through photos, videos or comments posted on blogs, vlogs and social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Myspace, thus generating an advertising effect. This form communication – initially used only by celebrities – is now becoming more and more common on social networks among a considerable number of users who do not have a particularly high number of followers.

Given that influencer marketing can lead to various forms of hidden advertising, in 2017 the ICA urged all parties involved in the phenomenon to abide by the rules of the Consumer Code and to provide indications and warnings to alert consumers about the true nature of the messages, when these were the result of a contractual agreement and had a commercial purpose, even when the products had been supplied to the influencer for free. This first intervention met with positive reactions. Influencers and companies now hold more transparent behaviours towards consumers and use hashtags and references which alert consumers about the advertising nature of the contents. ICA has also noted the evolution of the means made available by social media to influencers and companies, to allow them to reach consumers. In particular, influencers now have specific means at their disposal to make sponsorship relationships evident to consumers. Brand owners can, in their turn, make use of alerts and check references to their brands.

In its second moral suasion letters, which were mainly directed at influencers with a relevant but not extremely high number of followers, the ICA reminded the addresses that advertising must always be clearly recognizable as such and that the prohibition of hidden advertising has a general validity and must be therefore also applied to communications on social media. Influencers were alerted to the fact that they cannot pretend to act spontaneously and without bias, when in fact they are promoting a brand. From this point of view, the ICA stressed that tagging photos with references to the Instagram profile or the website of a brand conveys an advertising effect, but, on the other hand, the lack of additional elements may not make the commercial nature of the communication sufficiently clear to all consumers.

The ICA has thus reminded the addressees of the general rules of conduct in this field and has required them to make apparent the advertising nature – when this is the case - of all contents delivered through social media, through the use of warnings such as #advertising, #sponsored, #paidad or, in the case of products given for free to the influencer. #productsuppliedby; all these wordings should always be followed by the name of the brand being advertised.

Given the extent and the proliferation of contents on social media, the ICA will continue to monitor the phenomenon and to apply all measures it will deem necessary on a case-by-case basis.

Rome, 6th August 2018