{"id":1082,"date":"2015-08-18T11:18:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T11:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=1082"},"modified":"2026-03-15T14:49:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T14:49:49","slug":"diet-tanning-influencers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/diet-tanning-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"Deceptive advertising: Diet supplements, tanning and other regulatory grey areas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kim Kardashian by Eva Rinaldi, Wikipedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

“I have two of these a day as part of my hair care routine. They are delish!\u201d Kim Kardashian West said about SugarBearHair dietary supplements in a post with an #sp hashtag. (Instagram)\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Kim Kardashian and other influencers\u00a0 are paid millions of dollars for product promotion on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and other social media.\u00a0 \u00a0Question:<\/strong> Do these endorsements of dietary supplements have to be labeled as advertisements? How might that\u00a0 differ from endorsements of stocks or crypto-currency investments?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0Diet supplements are the exception,<\/strong> as Kardashian discovered in October, 2022 when she was fined $1.6 million by the SEC for promoting crypto-currencies without disclosing her payments.<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0While loose regulations allow promotion of vitamins and\u00a0 foods, real medicine and real money are more strictly regulated.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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What areas of advertising are regulated?<\/h3>\n

Branding:\u00a0<\/strong> Dietary supplements are\u00a0 (to some extent) regulated by the FDA<\/a> under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Under the act, “Manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements and dietary ingredients are prohibited from marketing products that are adulterated or misbranded.\u00a0 That means that these firms are responsible for evaluating the safety and labeling of their products before marketing to ensure that they meet all the requirements of DSHEA and FDA regulations. FDA is responsible for taking action against any adulterated or misbranded dietary supplement product after it reaches the market.”<\/p>\n

Substantiation:<\/strong> The FDA brought a case in 2015 against Bayer company because of\u00a0 allegations that they were not using randomized tests\u00a0 to support the claims of their supplements.\u00a0 However, Bayer did\u00a0 perform scientific research to support their claims and the case was dismissed<\/a> (DLA Piper, 2017).<\/p>\n

Endorsements:<\/strong> The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also regulates celebrity endorsements , which are perfectly legal, but\u00a0 must be disclosed under FTC (Federal Trade Commission)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0advertising disclosure guidelines for online influencers<\/a> in 2019. Failure to comply can result in high fines for both the influencer and the brand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brands: make sure that you look for such hashtags when reviewing and accepting influencer content.<\/p>\n

One court case that helps clarify any misconception is\u00a0 FTC v\u00a0 Garvey<\/a>. The FTC filed a suit over baseball star Steven Garvey because they did not think he expressed his honest opinion of the product he was endorsing. Garvey had been using the supplements prior to filming the infomercial and saw results, which goes with the requirement of the endorser using the product at the time of the endorsement. The court found that Garvey did not knowingly provide any false opinions or misrepresentations of the product and the case was dismissed.<\/p>\n

FTC v Warner Brothers Home Entertainment<\/a> is another\u00a0 example of endorsement disclosure requirements.\u00a0The court found that Warner Brothers failed to disclose that the marketing campaign for the video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor<\/em>, \u00a0paid online \u201cinfluencers,\u201d including the wildly popular \u201cPewDiePie,\u201d thousands of dollars to post positive gameplay videos on YouTube and social media.\u00a0 Over the course of the campaign, the sponsored videos were viewed more than 5.5 million times. Not only did they fail to disclose that these were endorsements but they also required the users to only post positive opinions which goes against FTC guidelines (FTC, 2017).<\/p>\n

The FTC cracked down on endorsement disclosures<\/a> starting in 2015 (Ad Age).<\/p>\n

Greenwashing<\/strong> is another area that advertising content creators need to understand. In 2021, for example, a lawsuit over deceptive advertising was filed by nine environmental groups against Smithfield Foods<\/a> contesting the truth of the company’s advertising claim that its operations are sustainable and “the opposite of factory farms.”\u00a0 The FTC has a “Green Guide<\/a>” to help with environmental claims in marketing.<\/p>\n

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Tanning is NOT healthy, and advertising supposed health benefits goes against FTC regulations.<\/p><\/div>\n

Health and safety<\/strong> of products, such as tanning beds, is\u00a0 also regulated by the FDA and FTC. Tanning is one particularly thorny area.\u00a0 In 2008 – 2010,\u00a0\u00a0the Federal Trade Commission sued the Indoor Tanning Association<\/a> over these false and misleading statements:<\/p>\n