UK Puts Restrictions on WOM Marketing

Starting May 26, the U.K. is putting strict restrictions on word-of-mouth marketing and making it a criminal offense for marketers to misrepresent themselves as consumers, according to Ad Age. A new law will make it illegal for brands to seed positive messages online without making the origin of the message clear. Apparently this legislation has already been in place throughout the rest of Europe since January 1.

This is pretty interesting and pretty revolutionary. I think there would be a lot of people in jail right now or fined to the hilt if such a law were passed in the U.S.!

Word of mouth marketing has become such a difficult area to navigate precisely because so many companies participate dishonestly. Just look at reviews on Amazon.com and ask yourself how many of them are real and not from the company itself, trying to drum up support and interest.

I think usually, consumers can tell when they’re being duped, and the loss of loyalty and the backlash from being discovered is worse than any fine the government might impose. But I also think marketers get away with this A LOT of times when consumers don’t necessarily figure it out. There are ad agencies and marketing agencies that have made a name for themselves by designing and implementing campaigns that are designed to look “grassroots” and “viral.” It’s a whole industry here in the U.S.

I still think that at the end of the day, people will take advantage of any open system—it’s human nature. For now, WOM still works, and as a result, it’s valuable. As long as WOM recommendations are a valuable commodity, there will be people manipulating it for their own means, just like everything else in human history.

Comments

[My Secret Weapon]

Hi,
I think this should be some restriction like these kind of marketing. But according to me this is not possible to stop 100%.