Facebook and the FTC
Facebook's new advertising offering has already elicited the ire of advocacy groups, which question how Facebook's ad targeting program will affect consumers' online privacy.
How will the Federal Trade Commission respond?
How far can marketers ethically tread into the realm of social networking? Is there-- or should there be-- a boundary, and how will that boundary be defined?
Comments
A good question and one I'd like to see the AMA discuss on a broader level with its members. At the moment I'd probably point to the work the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has done on ethics policies and guidelines. In addition to developing the guidelines WOMMA is also enforcing them. They suspended Edelman after the wal-mart fiasco for instance. As AMA members we need to dust off our ethics code and see if its workable in today’s social media world.
The aqua teen hunger force campaign was one such event that should give all marketers pause for thought, here’s my post back in early 2007 about the incident in Boston.
http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2007/02/aqua_teen_hunge.html
Here’s a link to the results of the Boston Chapter’s straw poll on marketer’s opinion about the incident, for the event we held a month later.
http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2007/03/boston_guerilla.html
Posted by: John Cass | November 13, 2007 7:35 PM