The rapid advancement of social media has opened up completely new opportunities for action. Influencer accounts boasting millions of reach and an engaged community are a coveted prize for anyone looking to promote their brand or products online, including on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. The dynamic development of influencer marketing brings continuous changes, including legal aspects regarding proper disclosure of collaborations. So how can good practices in influencer marketing be ensured? What should a brand pay attention to when working with influencers?
- Influencer marketing is an increasingly utilized form of marketing
- Companies wishing to cooperate with influencers should carefully select their partners
- Famous Polish influencers can face fines up to 50 million euros
- Every advertisement on social media must be properly disclosed. It’s not difficult!
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing based on activities on the internet, specifically on social media, which results from cooperation between an influencer and a brand. It typically involves product placement or recommendation of a product, service, or company in content posted directly on the influencer’s social media profiles. Advertising activities in influencer marketing usually take place on social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok, and the shared content usually remains visible on the influencer’s profile even after the campaign ends.
In influencer marketing activities, communication takes on a direct character, where the influencer becomes an intermediary between the brand and the recipient. That is why it is important for companies planning to start working with influencers to consider more than just their popularity when choosing a partner. Of course, statistics, large reach, and the number of followers are important! However, they are not the only factors to consider. To precisely reach the right audience, it is necessary to take into account the target group and the viewer profile of the given influencer. Experience and know-how of an agency working daily with influencers can be extremely useful in determining this data. Especially since when selecting the right influencer, it is also worth ensuring their authenticity and credibility, audience engagement, and interesting content that generates high interest.
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High-profile UOKiK proceedings – is this the end of recklessness in influencer marketing?
About influencer marketing, or more precisely about the practices and rules that every person posting advertisements on their Facebook or Instagram should follow, it became widely discussed thanks to the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) at the end of September 2021. It was then that UOKiK president Tomasz ChrĂłstny declared his involvement in the matter and initiated an inquiry aimed at examining the influencer marketing market and developing clear guidelines for those who use their communication channels to present products as paid advertisements.
According to the UOKiK president, a situation where an influencer receives payment for their post but gives the impression of sharing a private opinion online is simply unfair. Therefore, every paid promotion of a product or service without clear labeling that it is advertising may violate the ban on covert advertising and thus constitute an unfair market practice.
Preliminary investigations conducted by UOKiK indicate that a large amount of advertising content shared on influencers’ profiles on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, or even LinkedIn is not labeled at all as paid campaigns. Some are labeled incorrectly — for example, with the hashtag #ad, which UOKiK considers insufficient and unclear for many Polish internet users; consequently, such a campaign may be perceived as illegal.
Will influencers pay up to 50 million in fines?
Have top Polish influencers been deceiving their audiences for years and now face multi-million fines? Many indications point to this! It is all due to their reluctance to cooperate with the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. Although the office announced that it does not plan to punish influencers who have so far improperly labeled paid collaborations and only wants to verify the influencer marketing mechanisms in place until now, it turns out that some influencers — including those with millions of followers like Julia Kuczyńska (Maffashion), Marek Kruszel (Kruszwil), Marlena Sojka (Marley), or Marcin Dubiel — still have not responded to messages, submitted the required documents, or even answered correspondence from UOKiK. Such behavior is regarded as a lack of cooperation, and therefore proceedings for imposing penalties have already been initiated against the aforementioned individuals. It turns out that the absence of information from the influencer can result in a fine of up to 50 million euros.
As we can see, the list provided by UOKiK includes only internet creators. Traditional celebrities well known from TV or cinema screens are missing. However, considering that such individuals are increasingly active on social media every year and many brands want to cooperate with them, we can expect that sooner or later they too will come under UOKiK’s scrutiny.
The ABCs of every influencer: how to properly label sponsored content on social media?
Current regulations state that the promotion of products or services without clear indication that it is advertising violates the ban on covert advertising and is therefore prohibited. Importantly, this applies to both paid and barter activities. As a result, every company—especially those not using agencies experienced in influencer marketing—must pay close attention to whether their products are properly labeled on influencers’ profiles.
Although Polish law does not yet specify the exact scope of obligations concerning each social media platform, this fact does not exempt influencers from the duty to disclose every collaboration. Fortunately, all global social media platforms offer a range of solutions that allow paid campaigns to be labeled as transparently and clearly as possible.
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Instagram and Facebook
Let’s start with platforms from Mark Zuckerberg’s “stables,” namely Instagram and Facebook. How to correctly label product placement there? First and foremost, every post of an advertising nature should leave no doubt that it is an advertisement. The best way to do this is to clearly label each activity with the phrase “Sponsored.” On Instagram, every influencer has the option to add this information before sharing—in which case the label appears directly below the user’s name. Moreover, influencers can also add information about the exact brand featured in the post. Then, below the user’s name, there is a note saying “Sponsor: [brand name].”
Facebook offers a very similar label—each paid post is marked with the phrase “Sponsored Post.” It’s also important to remember that adding the phrase “Sponsored” is both possible and necessary for promotional activities on Instagram Stories and Facebook Stories. For even greater campaign clarity, the description of a sponsored post or story can be supplemented with appropriate, easily understandable hashtags for all users—#advertisement, #collaboration, #promotedbrand—with the first hashtag being the most precise and appropriate indication. Another way is to tag the promoted companies in the post or story description. By following these rules, every influencer can be absolutely sure they have done everything to make the advertising campaign as visible and transparent as possible.
Videos also require labeling
A similar mechanism applies to sponsored content on the popular platform YouTube. Every video promoting a product, brand, or service can and should be properly labeled before publication. Thanks to this measure, for the first few seconds of the video, the phrase “Contains paid promotion” appears in the top left corner, which is a clear indication for every viewer. Every YouTuber should also ensure that the video description clearly states that the video contains product placements for a given brand or was created in cooperation with that brand.
Unfortunately, TikTok lags behind
The situation is somewhat different in the case of TikTok. So far, there is no option to directly label content as “Sponsored TikTok” or “advertisement.” The only thing an influencer can and should do before sharing a video is to mark it as “branded content.” Then, the TikTok planned for publication is automatically tagged with the hashtag #ad. As is known, such information is insufficient and may be unclear to everyone; therefore, the hashtags #advertisement and #collaboration should be manually added by the influencer.
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Influencer marketing, in short, collaboration with influencers can have a significant impact on a campaign, its ultimate success, and increasing brand awareness. When selecting influencers to collaborate with, it is worth remembering that they should be people who focus on quality, good communication, inspire trust, and correctly label all advertising collaborations. Only then will the cooperation bring benefits to both parties.
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