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Updated FTC Brand-Influencer Guidelines

June 30, 2025 by Mark Leave a Comment

Calling all influencers!

I recently had a conversation with one of my clients about the FTC guidelines that were updated in 2024. While the new guidance has been out for a while, it seems like there is still some confusion so I wanted to provide an update from my perspective.

If you’re trying to put deals in place with brands, or if you have deals in place, you should understand the rules regarding transparency, clarity, and compliance. This is important because your failure to comply with the guidelines will be imputed to your client. Not a good plan for building your business.

1. Enhanced Enforcement on Fake Reviews

Under the FTC influencer marketing guidelines, complete transparency is required for all creator partnerships. This general rule has been in existence for many years and the updates focus on additional prohibitions such as:

Providing compensation based on whether the review contains positive or negative sentiment;
Paying for reviews of any kind, from any source; and
Offering other incentives that might be viewed as requiring a specific type of feedback.

2. Clear Guidelines on Compensation

The FTC guidelines have upped the ante regarding transparency in relationships. Brands must provide:

Clear disclosure of any significant connection between a company and a reviewer;
Proper identification of reviews from company officers, managers, or employees; and
Transparency when a review come from immediate relatives of company personnel.

3. Platform Control and Review Management

Additional boundaries in certain areas must be in place:

Must disclose that a platform is company-controlled and not an independent source;
Cannot artificially suppress or delete negative reviews; and
Provide additional transparency for the review collection and display processes.

4. So, What Does It Mean?

Nobody wants to meet with the FTC to discuss non-compliance. It’s especially problematic if your brand partner gets fined or sanctioned by the FTC because you didn’t know the rules. Let’s avoid all of that and focus on what you should do right now:

Review the updated FTC guidelines;
Check your existing brand contracts to ensure that you are compliant; and
Ensure that your marketing activities, particularly your process for generating, posting, and managing reviews follows the updated guidelines.

Disclaimer – Yes, I’m a lawyer, but I’m not your lawyer. All information in this post is provided for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice for any specific person or specific situation.

Remember – Be Smart. Be Legal.

Trademark Battles (part 3)

September 19, 2023 by Mark Leave a Comment

This is the third installment of a series of blog posts talking about the way some companies seek to enforce their trademark rights. You can read part 1 of the Trademark Battles here and part 2 of the Trademark Battles here.

Today’s lesson is another cautionary tale where a company regrets their decision to enter into the sometimes murky waters of trademark enforcement. It’s always better to tread lightly, particularly when you have exposure to the consuming public. Sometimes, you may find out that your decision to aggressively enforce your trademark leads you into trouble.

[Read more…]

Trademark Battles (part 2)

April 18, 2023 by Mark Leave a Comment

In my last blog post, I introduced the concept of a trademark bully and gave an example, using Monster Beverage Company for illustration purposes. In that blog post, I highlighted the specific problems associated with an attack by a trademark bully. You can read the “Trademark Battles (part 1)” blog post here. For this installment, we’ll focus on another notorious trademark bully, Apple (a/k/a Apple Computer). While Apple has a lot of satisfied customers, they also have angered a lot of people with their aggressive trademark enforcement tactics. [Read more…]

Trademark Battles (part 1)

April 12, 2023 by Mark Leave a Comment

Trademarks = Big Business + Big Money

For many businesses today, trademarks can be the most valuable asset that they own. For example, as shown in the table below, Coke is widely considered to be the most valuable soft drink brand in the world, worth almost $90 billion.

With this kind of money at stake, it’s no wonder companies will sometimes fight tooth and nail to protect their brand, even when their brand isn’t truly threatened. Sometimes, companies take a very hard line against competitors and seek to shut the competition down, in any way that they can. This can lead to companies fighting over their trademarks as each company tries to seize the advantage. In this series of posts, I’m going to present a few of the most notorious types of battles that take place in the world of trademarks. We’ll start with one approach that has been increasing dramatically over the past few decades. The “Trademark Bully.”

[Read more…]

Get Real

December 16, 2021 by Mark Leave a Comment

News Isn’t the Only Fake Thing on Social Media

Selling products on Amazon can be a very profitable enterprise and many influencers successfully sell their products online using Amazon as a platform. While it’s possible to make a lot of money using Amazon, some social media influencers recently got into hot water. They were allegedly selling counterfeit products through Amazon using their social media platforms including Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.

According to Amazon, Kelly Fitzpatrick and Kelly-Krejci took part in a scheme where they promoted what they called “dupes,” where a product is meant to look similar to a designer item without infringing on trademarks or copyrights. But in this case, the products were actually designer knock-offs sold by third-party Amazon sellers who concealed them in product listings.

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Content Licensing 101

August 8, 2020 by Mark 2 Comments

Lots of designers, bloggers, and influencers have questions about the structure and format for agreements to license their creative content. This post will provide some basic information that will set the stage. Please remember that while the issues discussed below are important, there are many other considerations, depending on the specific details of the parties in the transaction and the type of content being licensed. Also remember that licensing and assignment are very different things so we are only talking about licensing here.

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Attack of the ADA Trolls!

July 22, 2020 by Mark 2 Comments

WHAT’S UP WITH THE ADA?

Many influencers and content publishers, particularly in the DIY video space and lifestyle bloggers, are being threatened with expensive lawsuits over the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”). I’ve been contacted recently by a number of clients who are increasingly concerned about their potential liability.

In this post, I’ll provide some basic information about the current trends in ADA compliance for websites that may help you understand what’s going on and how you can prevent or minimize the potential damage if you become a target. This is a bit longer than most of my posts and the information is rapidly changing so stay tuned for updates.

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Cover Your Assets

June 2, 2019 by Mark 9 Comments

I’ve received some questions from a number of influencers over the past few weeks on the subject of insurance coverage. In addition, there have been some discussions in some Facebook groups where this topic is getting some interest. It seems like there’s an emerging trend in many influencer contracts where the brand/sponsor requires some level of liability insurance coverage in the contract.

The reason why having appropriate insurance coverage is so important is that you’ve worked hard to build a valuable business. You don’t want a misstep or mistake to strip the value out of your business. Additionally, since many contracts may now require insurance coverage, it’s a good idea to keep up with the changes. Given that many people don’t really understand or speak the language of insurance, this can get pretty confusing pretty fast. Although this post is a bit long and has a lot of “legal” like stuff going on, it will help you get up to speed on what kinds of insurance coverage you may want or need.

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GDPR – Oh Yes, There’s More……….

May 11, 2018 by Mark 11 Comments

My last blog post provided an overview of the new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) rules for the protection of personal data when capturing, storing, or processing personal data originating from individuals in the European Union (“EU”).

If you missed that post, you can read it by clicking here.

In addition to the GDPR, it’s also important for U.S. businesses to be aware of the EU Privacy Shield requirements. The GDPR is a comprehensive law designed to control the transfer and use of personally identifiable information in general. The Privacy Shield is concerned with only one specific aspect of data protection; namely the transfer of personal data from the EU to the U.S.

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