You have a Pinterest contest to promote your business. You ask the contestants to compete to put together the most creative boards based on a theme you provide. To qualify for the $1,000 prize however, the contestants have to pin at least 5 pictures of your products onto their boards. Is this contest legal or not?
Well, Cole Haan was the promoter of such a contest and according to the Federal Trade Commission’s decision, this type of contest is clearly illegal. But Why? As we highlighted in our social media cheat sheet, you cannot give someone an incentive to “like”, “pin”, etc. your product on social media without giving clear notice to customers about the quid pro quo. In Cole Haan’s case, the company argued that requiring contestants to use their #wanderingsole tag was enough to warn customers that the contestants were promoting their product for an incentive. Shawn Hessinger discusses why the FTC thought this argument was insufficient.
