Transparent Blogging Required by Law in the UK
Posted in Social Media, Web 2.0I’ve just read an article on Ad Age about new legislation in the UK.
Essentially the new law makes it illegal to:
- Not disclose that you are being paid to write a blog post about a product
- Pretend to be a consumer
All in the name of consumer protection. I must applaud the law makers over in the UK, we might get a law like this in New Zealand in 2025.
It’s a nice time to be a consumer, where companies are needing to be transparent to be competitive.
In my experience with banks and insurance companies - transparency is not usually a term they know about. The financial services industry has the biggest challenge with ‘new marketing’ in my view. They have made screeds of money over time that they aren’t as likely to get away with now. Somehow they need to be transparent and add more value for consumers - great customer service isn’t going to be enough. Although they’re spending a bunch of money online - they’re not embracing new marketing and instead dishing out a meatball sundae.
NZ Marketing Magazine and DLB (NZ Marketing Association) seem to be constantly regurgitating messages about “embracing new marketing” at the moment, so I apologise for the cliche.