Answering your questions about endorsements

Let’s start with the fundamentals:

1. Endorsements must be truthful and not misleading.
2. If there’s a connection between an endorser and the marketer of the product that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, disclose it clearly and conspicuously.
3. If the advertiser doesn’t have proof that an endorser’s experience represents what consumers will achieve by using the product, clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected results in those circumstances.

Sound familiar? It should, since those principles form the foundation of how the FTC Act applies to endorsements – and nothing has changed. So what will you find in the updated FAQs?

• We’ve expanded some topics we touched on the first time around
• We've taken a deeper dive into forms of promotion that were in their infancy when the Endorsement Guides were revised in 2009
• A staff take on how the principles of the Endorsement Guides apply to other issues that advertisers are thinking about – affiliate marketing, “like” buttons, employee endorsements, solicited endorsements, and uploaded videos, to name just a few.