Dear SEA Marcom colleagues,
This is to bring to your attention on the engagement of Social Media Personality/Blogger/Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) in your local marketing activities.
SOK Legal Issue
We have been informed from our legal office that Sony Korea (SOK) was fined by the Korean Fair Trade Agency for failure to disclose their economic interest in online consumer reviews. Based on Korea’s local regulations, companies are required to disclose that bloggers that they engage in their social media postings are being paid to do so.
Essentially, several bloggers posted reviews of VAIO and Xperia products but Sony Korea failed to disclose that the bloggers were paid to do so. Note that in Sony Korea’s case, SOK did ask its marketing agency to ensure the disclosure was made when the consumers posted their reviews. However, SOK did not know that their marketing agency had subcontracted the work to a 3rd party who failed to instruct the consumers accordingly on making a disclosure. The Korean Fair Trade Agency regarded “free trials” as an economic interest (i.e. where SOK provided consumers with new products to test out).
SEA’s Recommendation for Social Media/Blogger/KOL Engagement
Generally speaking, the legal position in SEA is the duty to not “mislead consumers or misrepresent to consumers” on the products – misleading/misrepresented statements would relate to facts (quality of product, standard of product, composition, style, etc).
Currently there is no clear regulation on social media or personal opinions in consumer post in SEA countries. If you are aware of any such regulations locally, please do let us know.
Moving forward from the advice by SEA Legal Office and SEA Management’s direction, if we engage any social media personality/blogger/KOL where Sony is paying for them (either by giving the product or cash sponsorship or any other sponsorship in kind) to post a review of our products, please note the following:
1. If we want to edit the contents and have final approval of the whole content, we should clarify in the contents or have a disclaimer on the social media post/review that it is a “Sponsored Post” or an “Advertorial”.
2. If we do not control or edit the contents and the content is written at the blogger’s discretion and based on his/her personal experiences, it is not necessary to state that it is a “Sponsored Post” or an “Advertorial”. We can request the blogger let us review and correct any factual errors with regards to product specification information before they post it online.
It is recommended to have some mention in the content that relates to “working with Sony” in some way.
An example is the recent A5100/A6000 social media campaign where we worked with Key Opinion Leaders(KOL). The KOL mentioned in their social media post that they are “part of Sony’s What’s your view campaign” or “proud to be one of Sony’s Key opinion leaders of a5100”. They do not explicitly mention anything about being a sponsored or being paid by Sony.
Examples: