Keeping Your Product Placements Legal

Article by Les Chaiet and Jeff Scanlon

In last month’s bulletin, "Stealth Marketing: To Disclose or Not to Disclose – That is the (Legal) Question",¹ we described the legal issues relevant to the practice of "stealth marketing", where marketers hire "influencers" to promote products in locations where a target market for the product would likely be found, sometimes without disclosing the influencer’s relationship to the marketer. For example, an attractive actor could be hired by a liquor company or advertising agency to pretend to be an ordinary customer at a trendy nightclub, who orders and raves about the liquor company’s new margarita cooler to other patrons.

Such "stealth marketing" tactics have been criticized by some consumer groups as "sneaky" and "deceptive". In a similar vein, certain interest groups have been critical of the nature of product placements in entertainment content and have pushed for increased disclosure of such placements. Other interest groups are