Well, here it is, the first blog for my new business. Choosing a topic wasn’t easy so I’m keeping it simple and using this first post as an opportunity to introduce you to Hashtag Ad Consulting Ltd.
So what’s it all about?
Well, Hashtag Ad is a regulatory consultancy, created to provide a unique advisory service to social influencers, their agencies, management and the brands they promote. I call it unique because it really is; no other consultancy provides this service to those clients.
That’s a little bit daunting when put in writing because it highlights the biggest risk that I’m taking – am I providing a service that isn’t needed? The short answer is "no". The thing is, social influencers are selling to us all the time. And the fact is, when you’re watching them, you probably don’t always realise it.
Sure, sometimes they use a #ad identifier in the middle of a spiel about how fantastic that detox tea was but, more often than not, they dont. So its hard to know if you’re being advertised to or not. And that’s the problem, because not making clear that an ad is an ad, is a clear breach of the CAP Code (the UK Code of Advertising that is administered by the ASA).
This is where Hashtag Ad comes in.
As the Director, I bring with me 13 years of experience investigating ads at the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).
I know what the rules say, how they’re applied and what happens if you break them.
So who could be better placed to provide influencers and those around them with guidance and training on those rules? And, if mistakes have already been made and the ASA have commenced and investigation, we’re ideally placed to handle the responses and steer that investigation towards a positive conclusion.
That, therefore, is Hashtag Ad in a nutshell.
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