Sponsored Tweets and surreptitious advertising: legal risks

A few weeks ago we analyzed the problem of sponsored tweets from the legal point of view and we saw an example of successful social media campaign through this course and using this approach.

Recently, as of June 20, 2012, the British advertising control agency issued a resolution in which estimated the complaint by a third party against two separate tweets posted by the player of Manchester United, Wayne Rooney, and Arsenal's Jack Wilshere, when considered surreptitious advertising, and urged Nike, on the one hand, to remove the advertising at issue and, second, to identify their advertising campaigns as such in the future ("The ads no longer Must Appear. We Told Nike to Ensure That WAS ITS Obviously advertising identifiable as such ").

The problem that arises in this case derives from the launch of the advertising campaign promoted by the company Nike in the UK under the name " make it count ", for which agreed with the players cited for its high prescriber, the simultaneous publication a message on Twitter using the hashtag # makeitcount and a link to the corresponding web , but with a content of the tweet that does not denote a commercial or advertising content. Before the contrary, both by design as a message tone seems eminently personal, spontaneous and voluntary account holder.

However, because of the linkages between these players and this company (which also sponsors the teams they belong to those), a message of such features is considered commercial in nature, so that the applicable regulations requires clearly identify an advertisement.