The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships.

In a staff opinion issued yesterday, the consumer protection agency weighed in for the first time on the practice. Though no accurate figures exist on how much money advertisers spend on such marketing, it is quickly becoming a preferred method for reaching consumers who are skeptical of other forms of advertising.

They want to put a stop to this kind of thing:

The group cited a 2002 Wall Street Journal article on a marketing campaign by Sony Ericsson Mobile for its T68i mobile phone and digital camera. The initiative, called "Fake Tourist," involved placing 60 actors posing as tourists at attractions in New York and Seattle to demonstrate the camera phone. The actors asked passersby to take their photo, which demonstrated the camera phone's capabilities, but the actors did not identify themselves as representatives for Sony Ericsson.

None of this will be necessary anyway once Industrial Memetics finishes development of it's Top Secret MemeRay. For the right price, we will make targeted demographics in a given DMA have an uncontrollable need for your product. In it's current state, all we can do is create distortions of logic that result in polarizing political views... But we will get past that hurdle!

...testing...testing...testing...LISTENTOTHEHIPHOPANDDRINKTHEDAMNSPRITE...testing...testing...testing...

FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing - washingtonpost.com