Milwaukee Tool sent out a general reminder of tool review policies and practices to reviewers and influencers earlier this year, and it seemed fitting to share with you.
Documents like this are typically confidential; I asked for and received permission to publish it.
Here’s what the email said, with its formatting preserved as closely as possible:
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Subject: Reminder: FTC Guidelines
Good Afternoon –
We have been receiving a lot of questions about new FTC guidelines so we wanted to do our part to ensure you have a clear understanding of what we expect from you as a partner.
First and foremost, as we have said from the beginning, credibility with your audience is the most important thing to us. For the professional user that we target, it is critical that they can find credible third-party perspectives on the tools that they use because these tools are their livelihood- they can be the difference in how safe and productive they are! We believe you achieve the credibility we seek (and your audience seeks) by being honest, objective, fair, and respectful- so these things are truly what we look for when partnering with media and social influencers.
Honest: We expect that you will clearly disclose your relationship with brands (Updated FTC guidelines linked below); including clearing stating when payment is exchanged, if you have an exclusive contract and/or if you have received free products in exchange for your review of those products. We also expect that you will use language in titles and descriptions of posts/videos that are true and do not mislead viewers. Clickbait or dishonest descriptions harm your credibility and are not acceptable.
Objective: We expect that your posts and videos will reflect your honest, unbiased opinion. We expect that our partners will try to review products from many brands and provide their audiences with a clear, objective understanding of the options.
Fair/Respectful: We want your audience to understand your objective unbiased opinion (even if that means it is critical or unfavorable). With that being said, out of respect and fairness, we would appreciate you bringing any issue to us first before disclosing to your audience so we can discuss. A heads up can go a long way to find a solution quickly, and by having a discussion you may also be able to share the resolution with your audience- this only adds to your credibility.
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FTC GUIDELINES
Full FTC Guidelines can be found here and
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p204500_endorsement_guides_in_2023.pdf
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/advertising-marketing/endorsements-influencers-reviews
We expect you as our partner to comply with all FTC rules and guidelines.
Here are a few specific expectations that we have for our partners that we want to highlight. [1]
1. You must disclose any “material connection” to a brand (includes a personal, family, or employment relationship or a financial relationship)
2. Financial relationships aren’t limited to money – you must disclose if brand is paying you and/or if they are giving you free or discounted products or services.
3. You must place disclosure where it is very difficult to miss (e.g., within the message itself)
- It is not acceptable to only place a disclosure in the about me section of your profile.
- Don’t mix your disclosure into a group of hashtags or links.
- Superimpose the disclosure over the picture on platforms like Snapchat or Instagram.
- Disclosure should be both through audio and visual on a video.
- If making an endorsement in a live stream, the disclosure should be repeated periodically so viewers who only see part of the stream will get the disclosure.
4. Use Simple and Clear Language describing relationship. Examples below.
- “Thanks to Milwaukee Tool for the free product sample to review”
- “This review is sponsored by , an Advertiser of this channel“
- “I have an exclusivity agreement with __, and only cover products by this brand”
If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out! Following these guidelines helps protect both your credibility and ours. We appreciate the partnership!
Thanks –
Milwaukee Tool Team
[1] Failure to follow FTC rules and guidelines or any other of Milwaukee’s expectations for its partners may result in termination of relationship with Milwaukee, discontinuing access privileges, end of free products, etc., in Milwaukee’s sole discretion.
Sky
Is there something different here?
Jared
That’s a pretty healthy stance for a brand to take. I’m sure many would be happy for reviewers to emphasize positivity over honesty and objectivity – or to obscure sponsorships and financial incentives.
Stuart
Different for Milwaukee? No.
Compared to other tool brands? Many – but not all – share the same expectations from reviewers and influencers. Some brands have been involved in shenanigans where they pay for hype and then promote or republish content as independent reviews despite undisclosed monetary connections.
Nathan
Seems pretty straight, more so than I expected if I’m being fully honest.
Do you get similar notes from the likes of Bosch SBD and others?
Stuart
Some will bake guidelines into sponsorship contracts, and occasionally a brand will consider tools as compensation and request heavy disclosures in review content.
If you’re asking if other brands have sent “Happy New Year, here’s what we expect from our partnered reviewers and influencers?” messages, the answer is no.
There doesn’t seem to be any “New Influencer 101 Orientation” messages, which is why Milwaukee’s guidelines reminder struck me as being significant and beneficial.
TomD
> the professional user that we target
This is the critical line, I believe – Milwaukee has obviously targeted professionals in their marketing but they make it explicit here. They don’t neglect the home user, and some products are obviously made with those in mind, but they want their marketing and influencers to be “above board”. This is clearly NOT the marketing line taken by all the companies (nor should it be, to be fair) but it’s nice to see them be open and outright about it.
Stuart
This is pretty typical; other major pro tool brands have conveyed similar preferences in the past.
mattd
I absolutely hate when tool channels don’t disclose up front that they got the thing for free or other perks.
One blaring example was a recent youtube video with the super clickbait title of “this made me get rid of my table saw” where the guy goes over what was bad about his old saw and is so great about the new $5000 cabinet saw he is unboxing and setting up. No where in the tags or anywhere else does it say it is a promotion, until the very end of the video where he revealed what really made him get rid of his old saw, and that was getting the new saw for free. He also never replied to any comments calling him out for this.
JR
Oh man. That’s downright dirty.
MattT
If it’s the YouTuber I think it is, I think his channel is to be avoided anyway. He plays pretty fast and loose with safety. Example: He had a a project that involved cutting and routing a lot of MDF–no sign of breathing apparatus at all.
JR Ramos
Thanks for sharing this and the convenient links to the FTC as well. I like this a lot. Seems fairly strict, but strict in the good way (especially, at this point, in hindsight over years of this circus).
I especially like the way they called out clickbait in titles and content. We’re probably all jaded to that nonsense by now but once in awhile it still just gets under my skin. There are several, such as VCG, who I refuse to watch anything from just because of their form and approach (he has some ok content once you get to it but he also stands out to me as one of the most irritating clickbaiters in tools that I have come across…thankfully there’s a lot of good real content out there, though).
This seems like an excellent boilerplate model for all companies to use with little tweaks that suit them.
I will say, however, and in conjunction with your post from the other day about influencers, that it’s a shame in many ways how companies have such influence and control over what used to be simple content shared by users. I think companies are directly to “blame” for all of this, but there has always been some of this on one level or another. It just really ramped up and then with the shift to monetization on YouTube and people actually making a living with it, that took it to a whole new level. So it’s good to see the feds as well as responsible companies (like Milwaukee here) reining it in a bit. Still makes the independent *completely honest* reviews and displays more valuable to me most of the time, but there will always be a mountain of chaff to sift through with online commerce (and this really falls into commerce at this point, imo). I do miss the good old days of forums and early YouTube where most content was honest straightforward user-to-user information and before “influencer” was even a term, and shills were easy to spot.
Good thing is, we still have Freedom of Mouse and there’s no shortage of content to peruse, or not.
Stuart
The links are exactly as included in the email.
Going back to 2011, 13 years ago, I attended a Craftsman event as an instructor, and each of us taught groups of “mommy bloggers” how to build a different project.
Some of those lifestyle bloggers were also brand “ambassadors.” The idea of “influencers” isn’t really new, that’s just the all-encompassing modern name for independent content creators.
JR Ramos
I was thinking around 2008 and forward. Around 2014 there was a huge surge/change, though. I don’t know how old you are, Stuart, but what we see today (call it 15 years or better now) is radically different than the similarly-veined tactics that were always used in various industries. There were paid actors and official spokesmen and such, and that was mostly the limit of company involvement, but none of that was like what things became with the advent of the Dot Com era and especially a decade into that as YouTube blossomed into direct commerce and then Amazon became a force majeure with their own flavor of influencing. It’s just really different and it’s been a wild, wild west along the journey – government resting on its laurels for far too long as it has also been doing with telecommunications that that ball of yarn.
Haven’t heard the term “mommy blogger” in a long time!
Steve
I am surprised any brand would associate with VCG. I guess he brings in the scumbag contractor demographic. Then you have a channel like Toolshow which is essentially a direct extension of the corporate marketing departments. And they seem to get all the latest stuff early because they are just shills who will say anything for money. I would generally prefer no reviewers had any connection with manufacturers AvE style. Buy them off the shelf. Tear them apart and tell us where they are cheaping out. I think he’s only ever been impressed with a couple tools.
Munklepunk
After what dCS just pulled against goldensound, or at least an employee of dCS, companies may be a bit wary to go after reviewers and want to be very specific about terms.
Dave
So if you or any other compensated promoter should detail shortcomings with the brand (any issues part of that?) before detailing comparison or shortcoming or fault. That paragraph bothers me as a reader but I get you are paid to promote.
What I see as the worse is when paid promoters are directed to build up interest in something new and worthless or or when promotors stop comparing between brands or deliver low value analysis.
Frank D
I refuse to read certain websites and watch certain youtubers because of the clickbait, lack of disclosure, etc … I don’t know if they have wisened up in recent years; but I have always been disappointed in who some companies decided to associate with, when they’re less than forthcoming as they should be.
Brian J Baumgartner
I like how Milwaukee handled this. However, I find it disturbing that the FTC pokes its nose into this (or just about anything it puts its resources into these days; it tends to be more problematic than progressive).
Gordon
Wait, You find it disturbing that the organization dedicated to “protecting the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and from unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education” is making and enforcing rules about how companies can interact with influencers?
There is nothing really new about the FTC guidlines. They are simply updating and clarifying how the guidelines impact people like influencers who originally thought they were immune from those laws. Immagine that, in the vacuum of federal regulation, companies were attempting to exploit people for profit!
MM
I have no problem with these FTC rules. They make perfect sense, and that is something I don’t often get to say about government policy.
But I don’t think this has much to do with corporations trying to exploit loopholes: as you stated, there’s nothing new about these rules, and the corporations know it. There is no legislative vacuum. I think it’s a case of individuals–a certain subset of influencers–thinking they are somehow above the law, or more likely being completely ignorant of it. Corporations are a trendy scapegoat but this seems more of an individual problem than a corporate one. I’m not going to blame the tool company if an influencer hides the fact they received a review product for free. That is scummy behavior, but in my opinion the blame lies firmly with the influencer or reviewer unless it can be proven the company was compelling influencers to keep quiet about the sponsorship.
JR Ramos
They aren’t without some issues and quirks of late but overall every one of us should be very thankful for this agency. Spend a little time reading through their press releases and there’s a whole lot going on that most people won’t ever be aware of unless a) it happens to make the news, or b) they were directly affected by the various problems.
They help to enforce unscrupulous companies that skirt the rules of offering product warranties – a lot. If your car maker can’t force you to purchase only their oil filters, the FTC ensures that doesn’t happen without penalty. Or (quite recent) your electronic device says warranty void if sticker is damaged or removed…took care of that, too. These things are set in statute but this agency helps to enforce those laws so hopefully you don’t have to spend money on attorneys pursuing a court case (or just losing money without any fight or recourse on your own…).
They do a lot of work to help ensure that when we buy “Made in USA” that it actually is…if that matters to you. There was a big push about that a few years back and while some of it was just minor misunderstandings or infractions quickly corrected, they also rooted out a whole bunch of liars and scammers who were fleecing people based on desired support for US jobs/manufacturing and also some issues with stolen valor.
That’s just the consumer protection bureau, too…one part of the agency but they do a lot more (arguably with more importance).
That said, it may be time for revisiting some of their procedures or authority…not much has happened there since the early 70s I think. So much shakeup in these agencies over the last decade, holes are starting to show and ought to be corrected.
Al
YMMV, but I don’t see paid shilling and lying about it as ‘progressive’. Nothing new about it. Companies have been buying placement in TV and movies for quite a while. And manufacturers pay editorial staff to run magazine articles with their byline _without_ the ‘advertising’ designations.
I worked at a magazine where a company offered six digits for an editor’s byline (name on masthead) on a multi-page airplane advertorial. No editors were pilots. None had any experince with the technical operations or could assess operating costs. They just wanted to appear interesting enough to this necessary demograpgh that influenced purchasing decisions.
Not progressive. Good old underhanded marketing.
Stuart
Exactly?
The entire message urges *against* underhanded tactics.
Bill
As someone who is not a professional, I am more interested in quality and being able to meet my needs. I don’t have a brand loyalty. My biggest concern is honesty about the items being reviewed. I have never doubted the reviews here. Thanks!
Jim Felt
Agreed.
Walt Bordett
IMHO the best part of this site is the high quality of the comments from actual tool users.
I applaud the guidelines that require the disclosure of affiliation of the “influencer” with OEM’s and distributers of products reviewed.
If we keep our eyes and ears open, we can decide for ourselves how influenced we should be by the presented content.
Jimmy Pickles
Typo – “must place disclosure where it is very difficult to miss (e.g., within the message itself)”
I’m guessing a “not” was intended in section 3 of the ftc guide at the bottom. Currently sounds like they want you to hide disclosure