Guidelines for Social Media influencers: Influencers on social media could be directed to label marketing content as promotional. In its draft suggestions, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has mentioned that all social media influencers would need to have to clearly and prominently label content that is advertising a solution or a service on digital platforms. The ASCI is a voluntary, self-governing body for marketing.
The suggestions come against the backdrop of the reality that due to the escalating reputation of social media influencers, brands are increasingly relying on them to market their solutions, marking a essential shift from typical tv ads that utilised Television or film stars to market the solutions. If the draft suggestions come into force, influencers would be bound by a strict code that they need to stick to to effectively disclose their promotional posts to the customers.
The body would be accepting feedback for these draft suggestions from customers, business as effectively as digital influencers till March 8, immediately after which the method of finalising the suggestions would start. ASCI expects the finalised suggestions to be in spot by March 31 this year, with their implementation on promotional content starting on or immediately after April 15.
The body mentioned that the posts that market any solution or service need to be of course distinguishable to the typical customers, so that they do not confuse it with independent or editorial content, which is why a disclosure label would need to have to be added from a list of authorized labels.
The list of authorized labels issued by the ASCI for promotional content contain hashtags like collab, ad, partnership, promo and sponsored. The organisation also clarified that the disclosure would be regarded as sufficient only if the permitted labels are utilised, mainly because customers could possibly not be capable to decipher any inventive approach that the influencers could possibly use to disclose such a partnership for marketing purposes.
Moreover, this disclosure would also need to have to be placed inside the initial two lines of the post itself, as per the draft suggestions. Apart from that, in case the promotional content is just an image, like a story on Instagram, then the label would need to have to be prominently superimposed on the image, the suggestions state.