Good or bad, Australia’s ASB ruling on Facebook affirms social media’s standing

The ASB, a nongovernmental organisation set up to evaluate complaints against advertisements and advertisers, ruled on 11 July that Smirnoff was responsible for comments and photographs uploaded on its Facebook page by members of its Facebook community.

While the ASB dismissed the complaints against Smirnoff, it did conclude that “the Facebook site of an advertiser is a marketing communication tool over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control and could be considered to draw the attention of a segment of the public to a product in a manner calculated to promote or oppose directly or indirectly that product”. Therefore, the board determined that its advertisers code applies to Facebook pages.

According to a statement by law firm King & Wood Mallesons, the ruling has implications “for the way companies should manage their social-media presences in future”. The risk for brands is that any promotional use of a social-media network could expose the promoter to regulations relating to standards in advertising and marketing, not just for content posted by the brand but for content posted by fans of the brand.

“Management of fan contributions to companies’ social-media sites is no longer simply an element of best practice in online marketing, but is now a legal requirement,” concluded the statement.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has issued a statement that it is deeply concerned about the ruling, believing it places “unnecessary burden on businesses for what happens across social-media channels” and has the “potential to hurt the development of social media for Australians”.

“Businesses who use social media platforms to promote their products and services should consider their options for moderating user-generated comments on their pages to manage the image and reputational risks associated with negative user expressions,” commented newly appointed IAB Australia director of regulatory affairs, Samantha Yorke. “This risk assessment and any resulting actions undertaken by businesses are best left to businesses to determine on a case-by-case basis.”

Chris Stephenson, strategy director at PHD Media Australia, said the ruling indicated that the body “seems to not have grasped the very fundamental shift in brand and people relations that is now underway”. Essentially, the ASB is attempting to regulate conversation, he told Campaign Asia-Pacific.

However the full impact of the move is hard to pin down. “How clients and their social agencies monitor content is about standards of acceptability, so what may be OK for a site aimed at men 21 to 35 is different to what is acceptable for a government site or the National Broadband Network,” pointed out a spokesperson for Reprise Media Australia.

Overall, once the panic has subsided, things may not be as bleak as they seem, experts said. “For honest businesses, the ruling is a non-issue,” wrote technology author and entrepreneur Paul Wallbank in a column for Smartcompany. “The ASB rulings reaffirm what sensible social-media experts have been advising all along, that social media is a conversation and you have to pay attention to what's being said about your business online,” he wrote.

PHD's Stephenson agrees that the ruling doesn't indicate the death of social-network marketing but does underline the need for brands, agencies and regulators to change their attitudes. “No matter which argument you subscribe to, if you want to do social, you have to commit to it,” he said. “Social can’t be an add-on. If you want to do it right, it’s got to be deep-linked into your ideas and plans.”

Facebook declined to comment when contacted about the issue.