Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Note to Consumer Alert: Truth in Marketing Applies to You Too
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John Cass of BackboneMedia birddogs Consumer Alerts' claims. Specifically, he called P&G and asked if they paid their teen WOM advocates. From his post...
Seems pretty clear to me too, John. What about you Gary? By the way Gary, have you stopped beating your wife?
Not to be discouraged, I contacted P & G’s communications department this morning, and Tami Jones, from P&G Corporate ER told me,
“P&G does not compensate any participants, there are no cash payments, some programs for our clients do involve free samples, but that is because people have to see the product to get an opinion about a product.”
I asked Tami if P&G provides any training to participants on how to advocate a product. Tami said,
“We don’t provide any training, actually we don’t encourage, or discourage participants to talk about the products. We don’t require participants in the Tremor program to promote or endorse the product. We see the Tremor program as a teen word of mouth advocacy program; participants are informed and not compensated for taking part.”
It seems pretty clear to me that P & G is not paying people to endorse products and therefore is not breaking the FTC’s rules. Gary do you have further comment on this issue, exactly what rules is P & G supposed to have broken?
Seems pretty clear to me too, John. What about you Gary? By the way Gary, have you stopped beating your wife?
Posted by at 1:00 PM in Word-o-Mouth
Comments on this entry:
I have to admit, when I read the stuff written by born again marketeers, that is to say, those that have crossed over to WOM, about ethics, I'm generally amused.
Here's an illustration: someone at a diaper company realised that if they put a picture of Winnie the Pooh on the diaper, the infant would become addicted to it. If they then placed Mr Pooh's products at toddler level in stores, they could feed this addiction until the child was old enough to ask for a new dvd. This type of marketing seems to go by the board when ethics are discussed. For some reason, I find this type of thing far more concerning than most spam. Where are the ethics controls for the people corrupting my daughter's mind?
Eh. Of course, P&G didn't pay any kids. Tremor needs to be asked the same question though.
Shame on them.