Influencer marketing : Reklamidentifiering och särskilda intressen

Influencer marketing has rapidly become a popular marketing method where so-called influencers get compensated to promote businesses on their social media platforms. The idea is that by advertising through an influencer, a company reaches an already positive audience with a high inclination to consume the products or services being advertised. It is common that the influencers themselves design the advertisements, with personal appeal to his or her followers, and in a form that makes the marketing blend among other, non-commercial, content on the social media platform. Consequently, the advertisement may border on hidden marketing. According to the requirement of advertising identification in the Marketing Act (2008: 486), paragraph 9, all marketing must be designed and presented so that it is clearly identifiable as marketing. However, the requirement is generally held and it has been noted within the judicial system that it is difficult to apply on influencer marketing. It is unclear how advertisements in social media should be designed to fulfil the demands of the law. Some of the legal aspects of influencer marketing are yet to be straightened out. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to clarify the following: i) how is the requirement constructed and how compatible is it with influencing marketing, ii) whose interests are taken account of and ii) could the requirement be held in a more distinct way to make it easier to abide by? The thesis concludes that the legal requirements could be clearer and therefore easier to comply with. One suggestion is to insert a more action-directing wording in the advertising identification paragraph in the Marketing Act, which safeguards the principle that marketing may not be presented as non-commercial content. Another is to renounce that principle and instead impose an explicit claim on advertising markings, which does not imply any closer regulation of the content of commercial messages. The thesis ends with a discussion about whether different aspects of the current legal regulation are favourable and non-favourable for the different parties involved, noting that the business sector has the greatest appreciation of the current legal position.