LinkedIn Influencers Beware: ASCI Drops a Friendly Reminder

Imagine you’re scrolling through your LinkedIn feed. It’s all serious and professional, but suddenly, you spot something fishy. A post by an agency co-founder, praising a big e-commerce ad campaign, seems just a bit too sweet. That’s when the spotlight turns to ASCI, the Advertising Standard Council of India.

Manisha Kapoor, the CEO of ASCI, took to LinkedIn to drop a little reminder (well, maybe not so little) to all the LinkedIn influencers out there, yesterday. You see, LinkedIn is the latest battleground for these influencer showdowns, after the health and financial influencers.

So, why did ASCI get involved? Well, they were tagged in a post that felt a tad too promotional. The suspicious user who tagged them had a hunch that something was off when others started gushing about the same ad campaign.

Kapoor didn’t hold back. She called out the agency co-founder for not following the influencer disclosure norms ASCI had laid out. And what was the agency co-founder’s grand plan to fix it? Slap on a ‘#ad’ hashtag right at the end of the post. Not exactly the subtlest approach, right?

Kapoor highlighted a couple of key issues here. First, both the ASCI code and the law demand that if something is an ad, you have to make it known – loud and clear. Placing ‘ad’ at the end just doesn’t cut it. Second, the user needs to know it’s an ad before they dive into it. It’s the influencer’s job to declare if it’s a promo or not, using the platform’s disclosure tools or a straightforward declaration.

Kapoor’s parting advice? Don’t promote stuff that’s got advertising restrictions, slap on those ‘ad’ or ‘partnership’ hashtags right upfront, and, yes, educate yourself on the rules.

So, if you’re an influencer on LinkedIn, remember this: Don’t mess with ASCI. Your reputation is on the line, and trust us, you don’t want to get called out on LinkedIn. After all, “Jab ad kiya to darna kya… Ad kiya koi chori nahin ki, Chup chup disclosure se chupna kya?”