Today the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it extend its remit to cover “marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under their control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter”. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has decided to extend the digital remit of the ASA and has today published a document detailing the new remit and sanctions.
I have some serious and personal concerns about the document. In justifying the extension of its remit ASA refers to 3,500 complaints in 2008 and 2009 about the content of organisation’s websites. How does this relate to social networks or social media? Throughout the document there is constant reference to “other marketing communication” (sixteen times on 14 pages) with only a very loose definition of what constitutes “other marketing communication” suggesting that it is concerned principally with the primary intention “to sell something”. Marketing communications is so much broader than that.
The plan is to carry out a review of guidelines in 2013, two years after the implementation of the extended remit. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding and disregard for the speed of change on-line; for example in two years Twitter went from zero to 10 million tweets per day. Spotify, which is fundamentally changing the music business, is less than two years old.
There is also a contradiction in terms of definition. The guidelines exclude “press releases and other public relations material” and yet the definition of “other marketing communications” includes items that could be considered to be public relations material, for example the promotion of unsolicited (or solicited) consumer endorsement.
I would endorse all of the objectives of the CAP code with regard to the prohibition of misleading advertising, the protection of children and social responsibility. The intentions here are good there is no doubt of that. I just can’t help feeling that in regulating the social media space, bodies that concern themselves with advertising and have advertising in their title feel more than a little out-of-place.
The advent of social media marketing and PR marks the beginning of the end for the use of demographics in targeting consumers.
One of the most powerful, authoritative and influential corporate voices in the world of UGC and the social web is that of Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford Motor Company, Detroit. He has over 30 thousand followers on twitter and is a genuine trail blazer in the use of social media marketing and PR techniques.
When websites first became available companies had to do with the issue of cyber squatting, where individuals with no connection to an organisation nevertheless registered obvious names for corporate websites and then sold them back often at exorbitant prices. This practice was eventually stamped out through legal channels and in some countries with the introduction of new laws.
The term cybersquatting was coined when websites first became publicy available. People would buy domain names using company or brand names or the names of celebrities and then try to flog them back at inflated prices. A similar thing is now happening in social networks but potentially the outcomes are far more damaging.
Ben and Jerry are no strangers to the world of PR. They regularly harness the power of word of mouth to promote their products and they actively promote their good works through the media. The latest Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream flavour is particulalrly interesting and not just because it piggy backs the news story of the century.
Companies are waking up to what is happening with their brands and there is concern in the boardroom. To them the web 2.0 world is the wild west. There are people staking claims, there are outlaws and there are wild rumours of huge fortunes. This is a digital frontier where the laws of the old world do not apply and voices are raised against the might of the old corporations. There are already celebrated examples of major brands and corporations capitulating in the face of on-line challenges like the David and Goliath battle between Jeff Jarvis and the mighty Dell. 
The growth in the power of brands in the 20th Century was partly achieved with the use of iconic visual imagery. 
