Complaints in the age of influencer marketing and digital era

Abstract

Advertising has long been the backbone of marketing for companies to talk to their customers. It allows them to communicate about their product, its features, pricing, benefits and much more. In order to differentiate their advertisements (ads) from their competitors, companies engage in the practice of puffery or hyperbole to exaggerate their product’s features, its utility or other aspects of its consumption. While puffery is permitted in advertising, there is a thin line between puffery and false advertising. There are regulatory or self-regulatory bodies in place to ensure that companies stay on the right side of the line as well as to protect customers from damages/ mis-purchases due to false advertising. One such body is the Advertising Standards Council of India. Despite the presence of regulatory bodies and the increase in awareness among customers, many are subject to false advertising from companies. In the digital era, this has taken a new route in the form of new forms of advertising, hence new avenues for being subject to false advertising. One such form is that of influencer marketing. This is the era of mini- and micro-celebrities called influencers who have built a following of their own and promote brands and products. This can be either because of their own liking of the product or because of partnerships with the brands. Their followers buy the product based on the influencers’ recommendations. While brands had control over what was advertised and said in the age of television and print ads, any case of false advertising can be solely tied back to the brand. But in the age of influencer marketing, brands have less control over what the influencer communicates to their followers. Therefore, in the case of digital advertising, the burden of false advertising falls on both the company and the influencer. Laws and regulatory bodies need to ensure that the rules and guidelines evolve in line with the trends in advertising and that proper checkpoints are placed to ensure that the customers are not lied to. In order to do so, an analysis of complaints raised by customers will help. This can lead to the identification of the shortcomings of any law or guidelines in place. 4 While there has been a fair amount of research done on the topic of complaints in print and TV advertisements in India, it is way below the amount of research on this topic done elsewhere in the world. The complaints in the domain of influencer advertising are still in its nascent stage in India despite the presence of the field for nearly a decade.