The night of the BET Awards, Diddy (Aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean Combs) sent out a tweet, expressing his desire that everyone watches the awards while drinking Ciroc vodka. He added the hastag, #toasttothedreamers the hashtag created by Ciroc’s marketing team. To the average person, this might seem that Diddy is a huge fan of Ciroc. To others, perhaps it’s obvious that he’s being paid for this tweet. The problem with either is that according to the FTC, he is required by law to note paid endorsements within the tweets as advertising, which he isn’t.
Many people may not know this, but Sean “Diddy” Combs has a contract with Ciroc Vodka to promote their products as their brand ambassador since 2007. In fact, he took the struggling brand from 40,000 cases a year to millions of cases a year making it the #2 premium vodka brand in the world. According to public sources, he received half of all profits of the brand to promote them.
According to FTC advertising compliance lawyer Richard B. Newman, if there is a material connection between a celebrity endorser and the marketer of the product that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, that connection must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed. Typically, no special language is required when providing disclosures via social media platforms with space constraints, like Twitter. Starting a tweet with ‘Ad:’ or ‘#ad’ would likely be an effective disclosure. The terms ‘Sponsored,’ ‘Promotion,’ or ‘Paid ad’ to disclose a sponsorship on social media would also most likely be effective, as long as people get the information they need to evaluate sponsored statements.”
Newman also states, “the FTC evaluates ads from the perspective of an ordinary reasonable consumer and if a significant portion of his followers know of “Diddy’s” ongoing business arrangement and connection with the brand, a disclosure may not be necessary. Determining that could be tricky. Given the rigorous standards surrounding celebrity endorsements, coupled with the potential liability of both the endorser and advertiser, disclosures are typically recommended.”
So, is Diddy following the law? Probably not in my opinion, but some might disagree. I personally didn’t know that they were working together: I don’t follow either Ciroc or Diddy on twitter, and don’t really care about either one of them. As far as I knew, Diddy may have loved Ciroc and has a small alcohol issue.
Either way, ethically he should be making it clear each time he tweets about them that he’s being paid one way or another. I’m also curious about the targeting to underage consumers via his tweets, also. Could he be violating other laws by tweeting his love of Ciroc Vodka to the potentially millions of kids?