Cash for tweets scandal

Transparency. It’s a word I hear bandied around a fair bit working in PR. But is there a line that can be crossed between promoting a product or service and manipulatively deceiving consumers into making a purchase?

This week, high profile celebrity tweeters have been in the spotlight for failing to be transparent about whether they’ve been paid or showered in freebies to tweet about brands to their millions of followers. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating whether tweets that promote luxury goods are deceiving the seemingly sedated masses into buying products to be just like their favourite celebs.

What do you reckon? Do you take tweets from the stars with a pinch of salt? Or do you think Liz Hurley casually mentioned Estee Lauder ten times because she just loves their cosmetics?

Maybe this should just be seen as another PR tactic to support celebrity endorsements via social media, and clearly this works if consumers actually believe that verified celebrity accounts are windows into their lives behind closed doors. I sometimes wonder if we give Joe Public enough credit, but the government seems to think that there are serious ethical issues to think about here.

According to the OFT: “Online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws.”

Here’s a few examples of these 140 character ‘adverts’ which are reportedly earning some celebs up to $10,000 a time!
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Apparently there is a brand new Playstation Move waiting for me at my office in the morning. Tres exciting.’ – Lily Allen

“CAN’T WAIT FOR MY NEW RANGE ROVER” – Henry Holland

“oooh, best mascara ever, Estee Lauder’s sumptuous” –Liz Hurley

“At BBC studio. Yeay they have Costa Coffee here. Need an espresso” – Peter Andre

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this investigation. You might be seeing ‘spon’ and ‘ad’ cropping up lots more on Twitter in weeks to come. But will these tweets lose their impact if the author clearly states that they have been paid to write it? What do you reckon?