Together with By Design

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RESOURCES

MONETIZATION NEWS

• Patreon (finally) adding Live Video

• Kajabi launches Kajabi Cart

• The trade war is impacting Creators already

MY VIDEOS

• When brands can't pay, Creators walk away!

• $10B in influencer spend, $300B in ecomm sales.

• Talent agent or manager? Know the difference.

• YouTube Shorts views are now meaningless

• Fans are getting rich from monetizing IP (that they don't own!)

• Math can save the Creator Economy - but it probably won't

• There are only 2 ways to make money - can you guess the second?

TOGETHER WITH BY DESIGN

The Productivity App Creators Actually Stick With

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• Mobile or desktop available

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• Built for how you work (hello, fellow ADHDers)

Students/professionals: If you’re tired of battling bloated apps like Notion, try ByDesign. It’s the planner that finally makes planning feel good.

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TACTICS

Revolve is getting sued for $50 million for allegedly telling its influencers not to disclose their sponsored posts as ads.

You should care because a few of the influencers they worked with are named as defendants in the case. These aren’t big name celebs like those who have been sued in the past (hi, Kim K) - they’re digital native Creators and two of them have less than a million followers.

This lawsuit is by a consumer, not the FTC, which potentially opens up a whole new can of worms for influencing.

That said, there’s an easy solution:

Disclose.

Seriously, just do it.

The FTC released some new guidelines last year that you may not have heard of. Here are 3 common mistakes I see and how to correct them so you don’t end up named when some disgruntled consumer sues a future partner of yours (disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, consult a lawyer for legal advice):

Hiding the disclosure / placing it at the end of a post

This used to fly, but it no longer does. Now the rule is to place a disclosure “with the endorsement message itself”.

The way I personally do that is by saying “my sponsors at XYZ” the first time I mention a sponsor’s name or product (whichever comes first) in a post. That doesn't have to be early on. I often talk about a high-level trend or a tactic without mentioning any product or sponsor, so that a reader or viewer gets hooked, and then bring up the sponsor halfway in.

Putting the disclosure in the caption

Another one that used to work but doesn’t anymore.

• If your post has multiple pieces of media (e.g. a video + a written caption or post), you have to disclose in both, including the video.

• You must disclose on images, like on IG or Snap - “superimpose the disclosure over the picture and make sure viewers have enough time to notice and read it.”

• On livestreams where people can jump in and out, you have to disclose multiple times over the course of the livestream

Here’s a simple way to think about it: You have to disclose wherever the audience might see the endorsement, and do your best to make sure they don’t miss it.

Assuming the brand knows

Not all brands and marketers consider disclosure rules when writing briefs or giving feedback. At best they are overworked and just trying to get their jobs done, and at worst they are being shady.

The problem for you is that you don't have the resources that a brand does. Revolve, for example, has $257 million of cash in the bank. A $50M lawsuit hurts, but it won’t put them out of business.

If you got sued for $50M, how would that feel to you? Probably a lot worse than to Revolve.

Brands will sometimes make requests that don't fully comply with disclosure rules. 99% of the time, this is not malicious; most marketers are just rushed, overworked, and not lawyers themselves - they’re just trying to get the job done and some nuance falls through the cracks.

It's important for you to be aware and protect yourself if this happens. Again, 99% of the time it's not malicious, and you should assume good intent. Just push back simply and clearly and move on.

If you're not sure how, here's a simple note I wrote to a sponsor recently (slightly rewritten to anonymize) who asked me to move a disclosure one line down in a post as part of their feedback. I know their goal was to improve the flow of the post, and not to be shady. I pushed back, we were all fine, and the post went live:

Feel free to repurpose this if you ever need to in the future.

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Written by Avi Gandhi, edited by Melody Song,
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