Prada Complaint
Prada Australia is one of the latest brands to fall victim to a complaint in relation to influencer posts involving their products.
What happened?
According to the Case Report, Laura Jade Stone posted a story to her 1M followers about a Prada Cleo bag, which was gifted to her by Prada Australia without any formal agreement in place between the brand and the influencer.
Ad Standards Decision
As it has done in many other cases, the Ad Standards Community Panel noted that whilst the brand had sent the influencer a gift without any direct request or stipulation for the influencer to post about the gift, it is reasonable to assume that the motivation for them to do so was that the influencer would post about the product or otherwise draw the attention of their followers to the brand.
The Panel noted that whilst the brand was tagged in the stories, and that in the third story, a card addressed to the influencer was visible, there was no other reference to the context in which the influencer had obtained the bag.
Having found that the post by the influencer was an advertisement which was not clearly distinguishable as such, the Panel upheld the complaint.
The Panel noted that Prada Australia had stated that they intend to provide clearer guidance around disclosure to influencers and to have their influencers add the words #gift to influencer posts about gifted products in the future.
TakeAways
This is a timely reminder to ensure that your influencers are properly handing disclosure requirements to avoid similar complaints and transparency issues.
You can view the full case report here.