UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Federal Trade Commission

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20580

Office of Commissioner

Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

1

Statement of Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter

Regarding the Request for Public Comment on Amendments to the Guides Concerning the Use of 

Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

As Prepared for Delivery

Federal Trade Commission Open Meeting

May 19, 2022

Thank you, Amber Lee, for that presentation on our revised Endorsement Guides. I 

appreciate all the work that’s gone into updating the guides and getting them ready for 

publication and public comment. As industry practices continue to evolve it is imperative that the 

FTC keep businesses, endorsers, and the public, aware of how we see our Section 5 authority

here and our enforcement priorities in this changing environment. These updates are necessary.

But these guides alone aren’t enough. False and deceptive endorsements are a major problem for 

consumers and honest competitors. I see these guides, actions we’ve taken over the past year, 

and steps I hope we take, as part of a process to ensure there is real accountability for law 

violators that take advantage of people’s trust and lie about their products and services. 

The advertising market has continued to change significantly since we last published 

these guides in 2009. I’m happy to see that we’re far past thinking about old Madison Avenue 

techniques. These guides address how people advertise today. Influencer marketing, for example, 

is lucrative and effective. The influencer economy grows by billions of dollars a year. Online 

reviews and influencer endorsements are ubiquitous on the internet and they present real and new 

challenges. Unlike yesterday’s celebrity endorsers, influencers are often seen as experts in their 

market, whether that’s for fashion, health products, or cutting-edge consumer technology. 

Influencers constantly interact with their followers in their market or social niche. These are 

often relationships of trust and without clear guidelines and responsibilities they are ripe for 

commercial exploitation and deception. The new guides make it clear that we intend to 

investigate breaches of that trust, whether it’s by brands manipulating reviews, influencers not 

disclosing material relationships with companies, or by microtargeting aimed at deceiving 

specific groups of consumers. 

But there’s still much more to do. Online commerce devolves into a game of roulette if 

we can’t trust reviews or make informed decisions about which endorsements to believe. In 2019 

I joined with former Commissioner Chopra to press for stronger penalties in these kinds of cases. 

As we said back then, “Fake reviews distort our markets by rewarding bad actors and harming 

honest companies.”1 To realign the market and help make sure reviews and endorsements are 

1 Statement of Commissioner Rohit Chopra Joined by Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter in the Matter of 

Sunday Riley, Federal Trade Commission (October 21, 2019), 

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1550127/192_3008_final_rc_statement_on_sunday_

riley.pdf 
2

honest we have to be able to seek civil penalties for deception in this area – especially as we 

continue to deal with the loss of our 13(b) authority. 

We began the work of bringing some much needed deterrence and clarity to this market 

with last year’s Notice of Penalty Offenses regarding fake and deceptive endorsements.2 I’m 

glad to hear we’ll hold a public event later this year on children’s capacity to understand and 

distinguish advertising. But guides cannot be as clear as rules, and in light of the loss of 13(b) 

they cannot have the same deterrent effect either. Instead of asking honest businesses to parse 

hypotheticals I’d like to see them follow clear guardrails so the FTC staff can do what they do so 

well and what Congress intended us to do: Carry out our statutory objective to investigate and 

challenge illegal conduct. 

I want to thank everyone that helped work on the Guides. From DAP – Amber Lee, 

Michael Ostheimer, Michael Atleson, Rich Cleland, Serena Viswanathan; from the BCP 

Director’s Office – Patty Hsue, Joannie Wei; from DCBE – Rosario Mendez, June Chang; from 

BE – Shiva Koohi; and from OGC – Marie Choi, and Josephine Liu.

2 FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews and other Misleading Endorsements, Federal 

Trade Commission (October 13, 2021), https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/10/ftc-putshundreds-businesses-notice-about-fake-reviews-other-misleading-endorsements