The US Federal Trade Commission has introduced new guidelines on what bloggers must disclose about their relationship with producers of the products they talk about. The Guide can be read in its entirety here http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf
I’ve read through the document as a layman and actually found it relatively clear about what does apply to blogging and what doesn’t. Works for me.
There has been a lot of moaning within the twitter wine community about this. Shock and horror would be more an appropriate description. Not so much over the fact that disclosure about receiving free samples or, and probably very rarely, being paid to write a review but more over the fact that these new rules don’t apply to traditional media too.
Let’s be clear about this – some bloggers receive more wine as free samples than most of us drink in a year and often don’t review the wines they receive, they just go into the cellar. I often see tweets saying how much they received – and one blogger declared today he had received 200 bottles so far. That’s pretty good monetization of one’s blog, if you ask me, given that they get to drink the whole bottle in circumstances of their own choosing and in very informal review environments with no editorial oversight. What are 200 bottles worth? Could be several thousand dollars of free wine.
Now if a winery chooses to do this so be it but in many cases its a pretty inefficient way of promoting the product. The new guidelines also impose a duty on the winery to ensure that the blogger does disclose their relationship so there may be a little more constraint on issuing freebies now.
The gross irony to me is that these bloggers are lamenting how much it costs them to write the reviews and why they should not be exposed to any risk, yet then flock to seminars on how to monetize their blog. You can’t have it both ways folks. Samples are tax-free monetization, Google Adwords on your site is monetization, advertising on your blog is monetization – you are in business. A nice business and one that may not be too terribly profitable, but still a business. You are paid in a different way but essentially a blog post in these circumstances is no different than an article in a publication. And the publications are held to a higher standard both by internal policies and by rules and regulations governing disclosure.
Don’t get me wrong though, blogging about one’s tasting experience is a good thing. In many cases its going to be nearer the average consumer’s actual results than many professionally-written articles.
The whole point of the new guidelines is to start to lay out rules for advertising and marketing using social media in what has been a totally unregulated and growing medium. As usual it lags behind the trend but its a good and fair start.
And in the interests of fair disclosure: I run a wine store and do receive free samples for use in the store for customer tastings. Most of my tweets about wine are as a result of purchasing the wine myself or from trade tastings where you get a standard 2oz tasting – not a bottle to enjoy at home.
Lastly, I am a Canadian commenting on US regulations so I’m a relatively unbiased (and inexpert) observer – at least for the moment.
www.twitter.com/paulrickett
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