New labelling for collaborations and advertisements

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From now on, there will be new labelling for collaborations and ads here on our blog. The reason is that there has recently been a new guide with guidelines from the Swedish Consumer Agency, which we of course plan to follow.

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New guide with guidelines from the Swedish Consumer Agency

A new guide with guidelines from the Swedish Consumer Agency regarding marketing in social media and blogs was recently published. When we first read it, we mostly felt that "oh, how hard" and "how can we manage to fulfil this without it being weird?".

Now, after reading and reading and talking and talking, we have arrived at decisions that we think will be good. It is perhaps even the case that it will be better than before. The Consumer Agency's guidelines are of course intended to make it clear to the consumer what constitutes marketing, and we think this is also important.

What are the rules on labelling for collaborations?

The new information leaflet is written in a simple and accessible way, and has the following features yet it is not always easy to understand what is required. If we understand it correctly, all advertising (i.e. when you have been commissioned to promote something in exchange for payment or a product/service) must be labelled:

• In a prominent position
• With a clear layout
• Using words that the reader understands, such as "advert" or "advertising" ("In cooperation with ..." is not enough).
• It should read who who is behind the marketing

New labelling on sponsored posts

We have previously labelled our sponsored posts with "In collaboration with ...", but it is clear that this wording is not enough. We also think that we need to be clearer with the layout, and that the labelling should be visible even before you click on the post. Therefore, we have thought that in the future we will label sponsored posts in the following way:

• A purple border on the header image (visible even before you click in)
• Text in white on the purple border
• It says "Advertising cooperation"
• It says the name of the co-operation partner

So, what is a sponsored post?

A sponsored post is a post that we have been paid to write. We write what we want and think, but on a topic requested by the client (or agreed by us) and often with a link to the client's website. In a few cases, the post may be written by the client - in which case we will write "Guest post by xxx". Note! We often put at least as much (or more!) work and commitment into writing the sponsored posts.

New labelling on advertisements

Do we even have adverts, you might think. So far we've had extremely few adverts, but we're planning to put adverts in posts. We know that some people find it boring, but we don't really have the luxury of being able to choose to have a totally unsponsored blog. We do this on a very large part of our total working time and we have bills to pay. Well, now it was said.

We have built a structure that allows advertisers to be seen on all all of our 3000 blog posts and pages at the same time, giving advertisers extreme visibility. We hope to sell campaigns in this way. Readers will then see a similar labelling as the one on the sponsored posts. In order for you to recognise that it is an advertisement, the advertisements will be labelled:

• A frame with the colour purple and white text
• The width of the image will be slightly smaller than normal images (visible on a computer).
• It says "Advertisement"
• It says the name of the advertiser

This is what we label

We label all advertisements and articles that we have been commissioned to produce in return for money or goods/services.

If we are invited to an event or to try a service or product without the situation is different. In these situations, we choose whether we want to showcase the service/product and how we want to write about it. It is not a marketing assignment, and is therefore not labelled as such. On the other hand, we tell the reader that we have received a PR mailing from XXX, or whatever it may be.

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