You know you’ve made it when you’ve been regulated by the government

By Elisabeth Simmons Gettelman

On Monday, the FTC updated its guidelines for advertisers for the first time in almost thirty years. The rules aim to address the new world order and tackle everything from celebrities disclosing when they are paid to endorse a product to mommy bloggers accepting free goods in return for a review. While both have admittedly gotten out of hand lately (Heidi and Spencer, I’m looking at you), it will be interesting to see how everyone ends up interpreting the rather vague statements made in the report.

Eastwick has worked with many a mommy blogger for our clients in the past couple of years and it has been amazing to watch them grow in size and sophistication. We weren’t the only ones to catch on that they’re a powerful demographic, though, and now it seems that there are those admittedly only doing it for the free stuff. I won’t get into politics on company time, but I do look forward to a bit of Darwin’s Theory kicking in. Several of our favorites see it the same way, realizing this will give them some of the credibility they themselves crave among the land of 10,000 silly-named mommy blogs.

We’ll report more on if and how this ruling has affected working with these bloggers, but I think it is important to only work with those that are following these guidelines and wish to hold themselves to some level of journalistic integrity.

Now if only the government could do something about Jon & Kate…