Brands and mar­keters now rec­og­nize that devel­op­ing part­ner­ships with top blog­gers can add huge val­ue to influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Work­ing with vlog­gers on plat­forms such as YouTube is an authen­tic, engag­ing way to reach con­sumers and gen­er­ate brand aware­ness. How­ev­er, bal­anc­ing adver­to­r­i­al with authen­tic mes­sag­ing has always been a chal­lenge, espe­cial­ly in light of new UK adver­tis­ing guide­lines. Will these new rules impact how brands work with vlog­gers?

A new set of guide­lines from the Com­mit­tee of Adver­tis­ing Prac­tices (CAP) has out­lined a set of sce­nar­ios defin­ing what con­sti­tutes fair adver­tis­ing prac­tice for brands and influ­encers work­ing on video plat­forms.

The UK guide­lines fol­low Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) guide­lines released in 2013, which among oth­er things, advised that brand­ed blog­ger con­tent should “at the very least,” include a dis­clo­sure indi­cat­ing whether it was “Spon­sored” or an “Ad”.

Why These Guidelines Are Significant

Vlog­ging has become extreme­ly lucra­tive for brands and for influ­encers. A recent BBC report revealed that top UK vlog­gers can earn upwards of £20,000 per month for ban­ners and skins around the edges of web pages, or £4,000 for a brand­ed tweet or Insta­gram post alone. Ear­li­er this year, it was revealed that YouTube sen­sa­tion and vlog­ger, PewDiePie, earned $7.4 mil­lion for his gam­ing videos in 2014.

The impact for brands can be equal­ly impres­sive. Super­drug, fol­low­ing the launch a new line of cos­met­ics in part­ner­ship with UK YouTube influ­encer Zoel­la, sold a record break­ing 70,000 units in the first month alone, and brought in an esti­mat­ed £975,000 in sales after five months.

Get ready for the week­end with these #Zoel­laTut­tiFruity good­ies! pic.twitter.com/7ROi87wDhI

— Zoel­la Beau­ty (@ZoellaBeauty) August 7, 2015

The #Zoel­laTut­tiFruity range at Super­drug broke UK records for sales in the first month.

The audi­ences these influ­encers com­mand means that form­ing an influ­encer part­ner­ship can be a lucra­tive propo­si­tion for brands. Vlog­ging is per­ceived as being authen­tic, audi­ences find their favorite per­son­al­i­ties relat­able, and they feel as if they are able to get good advice from them.

Zoel­la has been described by many of her audi­ence as being their ‘big sis­ter’; PewDiePie fans, on the oth­er hand, are com­mon­ly referred to as a com­mu­ni­ty of “bros.”

For this rea­son, how­ev­er, a del­i­cate bal­ance has to be stuck between adver­to­r­i­al or brand­ed con­tent and the con­tent that the fans of these influ­encers know and love.

What The CAP Guidelines State

The CAP guide­lines out­line a non-exhaus­tive list of eight dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios where indi­vid­ual guide­lines apply, with the aim of increas­ing­ly trans­paren­cy around adver­to­r­i­al part­ner­ships.

The guide­lines go into spe­cif­ic details on how these rela­tion­ships can work going for­ward: con­tent pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion between a brand and an influ­encer and dis­trib­uted via the brand’s own chan­nel for instance, is con­sid­ered trans­par­ent mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion. How­ev­er, if the same con­tent is uploaded to a vlog­ger’s own chan­nel, it is then con­sid­ered adver­to­r­i­al.

Chiefly, vlog­gers will be inter­est­ed in how the guide­lines will affect these “adver­to­r­i­al” videos, and the guide­lines state the fol­low­ing:

“[When] there is pay­ment and con­trol by the brand, this is an adver­to­r­i­al and needs to be labelled upfront so that view­ers are aware and under­stand that it is an adver­to­r­i­al before engag­ing.”

The CAP guide­lines go as far as to advise against labels such as “Spon­sored by”, “Fund­ed by”, or lan­guage such as “Thanks to X for mak­ing this pos­si­ble”, as it may be mis­un­der­stood by con­sumers to mean that the brand has had no input on the con­tent.

Essen­tial­ly, the guide­lines con­firm that in instances where a brand and an influ­encer are part­nered, and the brand has a role in the con­tent being pro­duced, that dis­clo­sures or dis­claimers are nec­es­sary.

How­ev­er, that is not to say that every fash­ion video, or video game play-through from now on will need a dis­claimer. In cas­es where brands “spon­sor” a chan­nel or influ­encer, but retain no con­trol over the con­tent itself, the video will not be deemed “adver­to­r­i­al”, and no dis­claimers will be nec­es­sary. Equal­ly where brands give away free­bies to key influ­encers, with­out con­di­tions around the con­tent to be pro­duced, videos are also con­sid­ered non-adver­to­r­i­al.

(Read CAP’s full vlog­ger part­ner­ship guide­lines here.)

How Will Disclosures Affect Audiences?

Accord­ing to both FTC and CAP, dis­clo­sures for paid for adver­to­ri­als must be clear, which for the most part means adding a note in the video descrip­tion. Here’s an exam­ple from Zoel­la:

Over­all, there is lit­tle indi­ca­tion that such dis­clo­sures have a neg­a­tive affect on con­sumers. The com­ments, for exam­ple, are typ­i­cal­ly pos­i­tive and there is no crit­i­cism of the fact that the video is a paid for adver­to­r­i­al. If any­thing, con­sumers here expect a lev­el of brand­ed part­ner­ship and appre­ci­ate the added trans­paren­cy.

How­ev­er, that isn’t to say that all con­tent can be adver­to­r­i­al. The real rea­son peo­ple engage so well with vlog­gers is for the unspon­sored, authen­tic con­tent that they pro­duce. Many vlog­gers pro­duce a much greater depth of con­tent that is unspon­sored, fea­tur­ing prod­ucts they have picked out and pur­chased them­selves.

So-called ‘haul’ vlogs typ­i­cal­ly involve a show­case of prod­ucts an influ­encer has cho­sen them­selves.

While the occa­sion­al adver­to­r­i­al can be large­ly accept­ed by view­ers, vlog­gers could endan­ger the authen­tic­i­ty of their con­tent by cre­at­ing pre­dom­i­nant­ly brand­ed con­tent. How­ev­er, the occa­sion­al well-pro­duced adver­to­r­i­al, per­haps includ­ing a com­pe­ti­tion or prize give­away, can boost and accel­er­ate an influ­encer’s career.

As ever, bal­ance is the key.

In many cas­es, brands are still able to work in part­ner­ship with vlog­gers with­out pro­vid­ing dis­clo­sures by giv­ing vlog­gers full con­trol over the con­tent (in these cas­es “a nod to the spon­sor”) is deeemed suf­fi­cient to meet con­sumer pro­tec­tion leg­is­la­tion.

Key Takeaways

For brands look­ing to work in part­ner­ship with vlog­gers in the future, here are three key take­aways in light of the FTC and CAP guide­lines:

1. Trans­paren­cy is key. If the con­tent is good, than con­sumers expect a lev­el of brand­ed part­ner­ship, and clear dis­clo­sure of adver­to­r­i­al con­tent is often appre­ci­at­ed. Such clar­i­ty can be ben­e­fi­cial for both brands and con­sumers, avoid­ing any poten­tial mis­un­der­stand­ings and main­tain­ing per­ceived authen­tic­i­ty of a vlog­ger’s con­tent.
2. Main­tain a bal­ance between the num­ber of paid for adver­to­ri­als, and con­tent which is spon­sored with­out impos­ing con­di­tions. At the end of the day, it’s the gen­uine, unre­strict­ed and free aspects of a vlog­ger’s con­tent which con­sumers love and keeps them com­ing back.
3. Trust in your part­ner­ships. Many vlog­gers have built rep­u­ta­tions and audi­ences on being high­ly in tune with that which their audi­ences want. If you’ve iden­ti­fied a vlog­ger who has a large fol­low­ing in a tar­get demo­graph­ic, it’s like­ly that they will have an acute under­stand­ing of what con­tent will be effec­tive for that audi­ence.

What are your tips for part­ner­ing with vlog­gers?