FastCompany recently published an article clarifying the $11,000 that many had interpreted to mean that “Bloggers must disclose every single freebie sent to them from companies–or pay an $11,000 fine”.
The article goes on to quote Richard Cleland’s clarification of the matter in which he states, “That $11,000 fine is not true. Worst-case scenario, someone receives a warning, refuses to comply, followed by a serious product defect; we would institute a proceeding with a cease-and-desist order and mandate compliance with the law” followed later by “There’s no monetary penalty, in terms of the first violation, even in the worst case.”
Another important point Cleland brings up has to do with size of audience being a significant factor regarding which cases it pursues when he states regarding word of mouth marketing and blogging, “If you have 20 friends or 16,000, obviously, we’ll look at the one with 16,000.”
The Fast Company article clarifies what appears to be a large wave of misconceptions about the interpretation of the enforcement aspects of the recent guidelines.
Good article, thanks for the link.
Interesting that people are focusing on the fines for non disclosure, fines that have been around since 1980, but have totally missed the real change – no safe harbor for “your results may be different” type of disclaimers.
True.
There’s quite a bit of discussion about that in the Internet Marketing forums but still not nearly as much as the fines.
Having been used by the press as a resource on quite a few occasions I finally “got” the fact that they are really interested in what’s “sexy” about a story.
I don’t even know if I’d either bother talking to them these days. It gets pretty annoying.
Good point, I wasn’t paying much attention to the Internet Marketing forum as I was to the Shoemoney blog on the topic – which is typically uninformed.
WRT to the press, I have the opposite approach. I take every opportunity to break down the issues into bite sized stories that inform and educate the reporter.
That makes sense regarding the press. Sounds like a skill I’d need to work on if I decide to continue dealing with them.
Finally am feeling good enough to go through the guidelines now.
Just finished reading your recent post about Testimonials and Disclaimers along with Michel Fortin’s (a copywriter) post discussing the new testimonial guidelines.
I can understand Michel’s point about the fact that there are so many factors outside of the product developer’s control, but even so presenting something like an “income testimonial” is dangerous because it puts the potential customer in the wrong frame of mind from the start.
At WorkAtHomeTruth I’ve really tried to pound home the idea that people need to think of a plan of action, technique, or even a detailed system in terms of “increasing odds of success”, but that nobody can tell them what those odds are, but that generally with experience the odds tend to increase, but that there are times where they will completely strike out no matter how good the information is. Sometimes there is just too much of a mismatch between the opportunity and the personality.
However, if you look at some of the older pages on the site like this old review of the original (REAL) Google Cash productthere are still some remnants of my opinions and advice being driven by the less thoughtful aspects of direct marketing.
I would never write a review like that today but I’ll be the first to admit that breaking out of that mindset having been so steeped in direct marketing for nearly 10 years now was not an easy feat.