Guidance issued for social marketers

Warc, 8 August 2014

LONDON: Financial services advertisers have been reminded that they must comply with statutory rules governing promotions on Twitter and other social media, following the release of new guidance from the UK's financial regulator.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has provided four key pieces of advice to ensure that financial brands that use social media channels do so in a manner that remains "fair, clear and not misleading", Marketing Week reported.

Investment product promotions on Twitter should include '#ad', the FCA said, to ensure they comply with the requirement that they are clearly identified as such.

Each communication should be considered individually, it added, and financial firms should also consider inserting risk warnings into tweets. Finally, they should also consider image advertising instead of characters.

The FCA's intervention urging financial firms to adopt a "media neutral" approach came in the same week that the Digital Marketing Association (DMA) revamped its code of practice covering all data-driven marketing activity.

The new DMA Code, which comes into force on Monday 18 August and will be compulsory for all DMA members, centres on five principles that the DMA says goes beyond compliance.

"We've taken a new approach to self-regulation that recognises the need to focus on principles that go above and beyond compliance with the law," said Chris Combemale, DMA executive director.

"It's perfectly easy to follow all of the details of regulation and yet fail to meet the expectations of the customer, such as how you use their data

"Our Code centres on five principles to inspire the industry to serve each customer with fairness and respect. Marketing with customers, not at them, is imperative to fostering trust and achieving commercial success."

Data sourced from Marketing Week, DMA; additional content by Warc