These days all social media platforms are flooded with profiles of influencers and celebrity endorsers – These people core job is to endorse different people, products, services or concepts and the most unfortunate thing is that most of so-called influencers or endorsers do not care about the effect of their endorsements on their followers or the general public.
There have been no specific laws dealing with any liability of celebrity endorsers or social influencers for breach of laws rather there are few guidelines which deal with celebrity endorsers or social influencers which are compliant in nature and never really deal with serious liability (penalty or imprisonment) aspect of celebrity endorsers or social influencers as the existing guidelines are silent regarding breach aspect of such guidelines.
Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has issued new guidelines to make celebrity endorsers or social influencers more accountable for their endorsements and to establish mechanism to deal with breaches of such celebrity endorsers or social influencers of these guidelines which is not the case with prior guidelines.
Noteworthy guidelines of CCPA with respect to celebrity endorsers or social influencers:
Celebrity endorsers or social influencers are under a responsibility to check authenticity of claims they endorse – As failure or inability to check veracity of their claims could result in false and misleading advertisements making them liable for being part of and endorsing such false and misleading advertisements.
Tricky part for celebrity endorsers or social influencers is to ensure they have adequate information to support their endorsements – As lack of knowledge of implications of their endorsements will bring unpleasant surprises to celebrity endorsers or social influencers.
Further there is no defined criteria what will constitute adequate information, celebrity endorsers or social influencers shall have to be mindful of their endorsements and should learn about the products and services they endorse and implications of such products and services on consumers or end users – If, celebrity endorsers or social influencers did not do proper and firsthand due diligence about their endorsements and implications, could certainly result in breach of CCPA guidelines.
Celebrity endorsers or social influencers shall have to ensure their endorsements are genuine and reflect existing state of things – This is very important one cannot endorse a product as per endorsement script or based on their previous experience.
It is advisable for celebrity endorsers or social influencers to first use any product/ service and have their own firsthand experience and based on their experience, if they are satisfied themselves with a product/service as genuine, then they can proceed with endorsements for genuine products.
This act of experiencing the genuineness of a product/service will come to celebrity endorsers or social influencers rescue and will serve as a genuine defence in case of landing in any soup of false or misleading endorsements.
Another most important thing celebrity endorsers or social influencers is that they have to make a disclosure of material connection (if any) with subject of the endorsements – This makes them accountable to disclose any monetary or non-monetary benefit they get out of such endorsements to establish a clear case of such endorsement as a genuine review or advertisement with a financial or non-financial benefit to the endorser.
Most intriguing part of these guidelines is the element of penalty or imprisonment that could be imposed on celebrity endorsers or social influencers. This is like never before thing, any celebrity endorsers or social influencers violate these guidelines they have to pay price in the form of penalty or imprisonment based on the gravity of the breach.
Such penalty or imprisonment will be as follows:
1) Penalty: Rs. 10 lakhs for first violation and upto Rs. 50 lakhs for subsequent violations
2) Ban: celebrity endorsers or social influencers could be banned for a period of one year (for first violation) and a period of upto 3 years (subsequent violations)
3) Imprisonment: Failure to comply with order of monetary penalty or ban could land defaulter in jail.
