Michael Lasky, Senior Partner for Davis & Gilbert, discusses how the FTC’s proposed rules could regulate PR.
Some of Michael’s VlogViews:
“The first thing to know is that the FTC regulates all marketing and advertising activities. Many people in public relations have for many years believed that only their advertising brethren were regulated and not the product of PR. In fact that’s a misnomer. PR is all commercial speech, even stuff that is media relations related….The new guidelines, not law, they are proposed guidelines…is having greater disclosure and imposing greater disclosure on marketers and their agencies.”
“This is not just the client’s problem. We’ve seen this in many, many instances, where both the reputation issue and the legal liability for this kind of disclosure is both the client and the agency’s responsibility.”
“Transparency is the new mantra but there are a lot of instances when it’s not clear…if you see someone of great notoriety, you know that he is not going to pitch Motorola phones just because he feels like it. There is a notion there that it is implied. That he is being paid. But there are a lot of times, especially in public affairs work…you don’t really know if that person is there because he believes in the cause or because he has a contract with the organization behind the cause in which he’s a paid spokesperson.”
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