Authorities warn influencers about the risks of deceptive advertising

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

The National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) of Peru is conducting workshops with social media personalities about the proper use of their publications when advertising products and services.

Although Indecopi is analyzing adopting specific regulations for influencer marketing, the current guidelines are framed in the unfair competition chapters of the Digital Advertising Law. Such chapters establish that influencers must expressly warn followers about all sponsored content in their publications, verify that all published information is accurate and specify that, when publishing testimonial advertising, the experiences are authentic and recent.

"If the influencers don’t meet the expectations of their followers, the credibility of them and their promotions may be lost”, Indecopi’s authorities stated during a forum organized in Lima to debate the subject. The activity highlighted the global growth of the market that influencers provide to trademarks: during 2018 this market reached USD 4.5 billion and by the end of 2019 it is estimated to be of USD 6.5 billion. 78% of it comes from Instagram.