|
If you haven’t lived under a rock the last couple years you noticed that Instagram is full of accounts that promote goods or services from brands. These ‚influencers‘ rank from world-renowned celebrities to people well-known in smaller circles and sub-cultures.
What they have in common is that they act like advertising spokespersons for the brands they are promoting, often downplaying or concealing their relationship with the brand, or their motivations for the posts.
With the proliferation of ad blockers, a lot of brands turned to social media influencers as marketing outlets, because their content is much harder to classify as advertising, and in the walled garden of Instagram, ad blockers simply have no say at all. (It is my guess that this is the reason why Instagram doesn’t care about instagram.com at all).
This tactic was just dealt a huge blow.
In a landmark decision, a german court now ruled that social media posts bought by brands must be clearly labeled as advertising. According to the court, it is not enough to include the hashtag #ad or something similar in the hashtag party at the end of the post.
The ruling was against the drugstore chain Rossmann who hired an influencer to advertise their online promotions and it is more than just a slap on the wrist: It also carries a fine of up to 250.000 euro if they are caught doing it again.
What does that mean for influencer marketing?
For one, it puts pressure on Instagram to roll out their already announced new tagging system for ‚sponsored posts‘.
With the user interface change, Instagram will correct their relationship with influencers, and maybe even distance themselves a bit from them.
The big social media influencers are already operating like independent publishing houses, and adding a sponsoring tag won’t change their business model in a big way.
Who might be in trouble are the social media stars with less followers, who often don’t get paid in cash, but in swag. They mostly build on their credibility, something that will likely get a dent if they start tagging their content as being paid-for.
Then again, if you’re not making a living out of it, you might just be small enough to slip under the radar.
|
