Quarterly Brand and Influencer Report: The Good, Bad, and Highly Problematic
Quarterly Brand and Influencer Report: The Good, Bad, and Highly Problematic
The Fashion Law
The rise of fashion industry influencers has been accompanied by a significant spike in federal truth in advertising law violations, particularly from the industry’s most followed influencers and brands. As we told you earlier this year, fashion’s most successful personal style bloggers and major fashion and cosmetics brands, alike, are at the center of a truly massive deceptive marketing scheme that has the effect of misleading consumers.
An array of recent studies has shown that consumers, particularly millennial ones, do not respond most heavily when they know something is an ad. In theory, they are much more likely to engage with a brand or blogger/influencer and purchase something promoted by said blogger/influencer if they think the endorsement is authentic, and not because the individual was paid to endorse it. As such, it is a very common tactic for bloggers to either disclose in a way that is not obvious or fail to disclose material connections altogether for this exact purpose – both of which amount to willful violations of the FTC Act.
The following list takes into account 19 of the industry’s most celebrated influencers – from the biggest names, such as Chiara Ferragni and Julie Sariñana, to somewhat lesser-followed but still very noteworthy ones, like Marianna Hewitt and Gala Gonzalez, as well as the brands with which they are associated.
Far from merely providing a look at the bloggers that are and are not abiding by federal advertising laws, such as the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) Act, this ranking should serve as a wake up calls for brands, which the FTC holds accountable for such advertising failures, in terms of how well they are – or more likely, are not – doing to abide by federal law.