Last Thursday, students gathered in the Foster Auditorium in the Paterno Library for the Ben Bronstein Lecture in Ethics and Public Relations. Alan Marcus, a senior vice president who leads the SHIFT Communications New York Office, was the main speaker that night as he discussed the Do’s and Don’ts of FCC compliance in Public Relations and how to find the right balance.
Situation Definition
He focused his discussion around the topic of influencers and, well, their influence in advertisements. Two main issues that brought intense ethical messages to me during the lecture were the facts that these influencers would receive money, under the table, to promote a product. Also, these influencers would only give biased reviews for the product they were promoting. These statements were issues to me cause essentially the influencers and the companies paying these people were screwing over their customers. Consumers deserve the right to know if an influencer’s opinion is biased or not. They deserve the right to make a sound purchase on a product based of the judgment of the influencer.
Analysis
As stated before, the ethical messages I received from the lecture were in regard to the fact that influencers would get paid under the table by companies to promote their products. The reason for this rise of influencers was simple: the rise of social media. Influencers offered third party credibility, something traditional advertisement cannot. This with the decline of TV viewership gave way to influencers and their popular engagement with the customers. In a scholarly review written by Robert Kozinets, Anthony Patternson and Rachel Ashman, they mention contemporary consumer culture and its desire to crave something new. “Contemporary consumer culture is heaped to the brim with desirous cravings. Cravings for the latest news, for the next gadget, for a sexy selfie—those incessant urges are an inescapable part of our being alive today.” This is big for advertisers, for if an ad is presented in such a way, it makes it easier to attract consumers. This idea of being “up to date” and “with the times” fills the heads of consumers for this desire to fit in is really crucial. That makes influencers so powerful because, to us, as consumers, we see these influencers in a different light. As if what they do, we should mimic because and just like them. An example Marcus used was DJ Khaled and Ciroc. DJ Khaled posted a picture on the Internet of him by the pool with a bottle of Ciroc. Seeing him drink that, makes a consumer believe they should buy Ciroc too because that’s the “cool’ thing to do. It all comes back to relating the influencer with the consumer. This is brilliant marketing, for it creates a relationship between the consumer and influencer, and essentially, the company and the consumer.
But, it became known that several companies failed to disclose paid influencer relationships, which led to scrutiny and involvement with the FCC. According to the FCC’s Public Notice (2016), “In addition, the 2015 Open Internet Order reconfirmed—but did not modify—the Transparency Rule requirements around disclosure at the point of sale, requiring “at a minimum, the prominent display of disclosures on a publicly available website and disclosure of relevant information” (pg.3). The FCC understands the power an influencer can have on a product, but there has to come a point where the relationship between a company and an influencer is made known. This protects the customer from biased advertising and gives them back their power as consumers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I thought the Ben Bronstein Lecture was very informative. Alan Marcus did a great job with breaking down how influencers work and their role in advertising. Essentially, the FCC made sure it was protecting the consumers and their right to know about the products they were buying. Honesty and accuracy became focal points the FCC really tried to drive home. Now a simple “#ad” can let one know if an influencer is being paid by the company it’s supporting. This puts the consumer back into the driver seat and protects them from unethical and inaccurate advertisements.
Federal Communications Commission,GUIDANCE ON OPEN INTERNET TRANSPARENCY RULE REQUIREMENTS [Public Notice]. (2016). 1-11.
KOZINETS, R., PATTERSON, A., & ASHMAN, R. (2017). Networks of Desire: How Technology Increases Our Passion to Consume. Journal Of Consumer Research, 43(5), 659-682. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucw061