To: Marketing departments at Gibson Guitars, Saab, Hecker & Koch, Schechter, Apple, Fender Guitars, Lenovo, Springfield Armory, The Saint Paul Hotel, Amazon.com, Mesa Amplifiers, NoodleCo, Cannondale Bikes, Fabrique Nationale, Best Buy, 1-800-FLOWERS, Sony, Guitar Center, Rainbow Foods, Schweize Industrie Gesellschaft, Jeep, Chipotle, Marshall Electronics, General NanoSysterms, Taqueria Pineda, Bentley, Marriott, ParaOrdinance, Kowalski’s Market, The Park South Hotel in Manhattan, Hamer Guitars, DOD Electronics, Colt Firearms, Line Six Amplifiers, Shure, Kelloggs, Kimber Firearms, Guild Guitars.

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Solving that pesky FTC issue.

All,

I’m not sure who did what to whom to get the FTC all up in your grille, but it musta been a doozy of a lie!

As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they’re promoting, along with the product’s marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media. PQ Media projects that marketers will spend $3.7 billion on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.

At any rate – just to be safe (and protect your shareholders), feel perfectly free to dump whatever social networkers you’re working with now, and send products to me to review.  I guarantee absolute, fiercely-honest lawsuit-proof reviews of your products and services.
All of them.

It’s your fiduciary duty!

That is all.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.