Choose channels and messengers with the source in plain sight
Where and through whom will the message travel, with the source visible?
This chapter builds a channel plan across owned, earned, and paid media and sets the rules for anyone who speaks on your behalf. It covers endorsement and influencer disclosure under the FTC Endorsement Guides, honest handling of reviews, and labels for advertising that looks like editorial content.
All stages
Map owned, earned, and paid
Sort every possible channel into three groups. Owned channels are the ones you control and people have chosen to receive: your email list, website, packaging, and your own social accounts. Earned channels are other people talking about you because they decided to: press coverage, reviews, word of mouth. Paid channels are everything you buy: advertisements, sponsorships, creators, affiliates.
Plan in that order. Owned channels reach people who already agreed to hear from you and cost the least. Earned attention cannot be bought, and the moment you pay for it or attach conditions to it, it becomes paid and must be labelled as such. For each channel in the plan record who it reaches from your primary segment, whether people there expect commercial messages, what it costs, and how you will measure its effect in stage 8.
Choose messengers who really use the product
A messenger lends the message their credibility, so the credibility has to be earned honestly. Under the FTC Endorsement Guides an endorsement must reflect the honest opinion and real experience of the endorser, and it cannot carry a claim the advertiser could not make directly. In practice: choose people whose audience overlaps your segment and who would plausibly use the product; give them the product well before they post; and give them a fact sheet of prices and substantiated claims, not a script of opinions.
Tell them in writing that they are free to criticise. You remain responsible for what a paid messenger says about your product, so reserve the right to require correction of factual errors, and nothing more.
Disclose every material connection
A material connection is any relationship that might affect how the audience weighs the endorsement: payment, free product, commission, employment, family. Each one must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. That means inside the content itself, at the beginning, in plain words such as "ad" or "paid partnership with", spoken as well as written in video, and in the language of the post. A tag buried among hashtags, or visible only after tapping "more", does not count. Use the platform's disclosure tool and the plain words together.
Reviews follow the same logic. Do not write your own, do not let staff write them without saying who they are, do not pay for them or make an incentive depend on a positive rating, and do not hide the negative ones.
Label paid content that looks editorial
Sponsored articles, advertorials, and promoted posts borrow the look of editorial content. They need a label a reader will notice before deciding to read: "Advertisement" or "Sponsored by" with your name, near the headline, on the listing and again on the page. The test is whether an ordinary reader would know it was advertising before engaging with it.
Write these terms into every contract with a publisher, creator, or affiliate: the exact disclosure wording, where it appears, your right to check factual claims, and the duty to correct errors. Then record each placement in a channel register so that anyone can see, line by line, who is speaking and who paid.
Techniques at this stage, and where the line is
Use messengers whose expertise is real and relevant to the claim, and say what their connection to you is.
The line: Borrowed or implied credentials, or an expert whose payment is hidden from the audience.
Send product to creators who would plausibly use it, with no obligation to post, and require a clear disclosure of the gift or payment if they do.
The line: Free product or payment with an unspoken expectation of praise and no disclosure, so the post passes as a spontaneous recommendation.
Show real reviews and real customer numbers, including the critical ones, with enough detail that they can be checked.
The line: Reviews that are bought, written by insiders, filtered to remove the negative, or counts that are invented or rounded up.
A well-liked messenger draws attention to the product; keep their role to things they can honestly speak to.
The line: Using a person's appeal in one field to imply expertise or evidence in another, such as health claims from an entertainer.
Samples and gifts are fair when they are given without conditions and the recipient is free to say nothing or to be critical.
The line: A gift designed to create a feeling of debt that is then called in as coverage, a rating, or a purchase.
Placement inside content is acceptable when the audience is told, in the content, that it is paid for.
The line: Placement engineered so that viewers take it for the creator's own unprompted choice.
Familiarity builds with repeated, recognisable, clearly branded appearances across a few channels.
The line: Repetition through sources made to look independent of each other when one sponsor is behind them all.
Worked example
Kestrel Coffee has a budget of 9,000 dollars and a message brief for Flex. It needs a channel plan in which a customer can always tell that Kestrel is the one speaking.
- 1Owned first: three launch emails to the 9,000-person opt-in list, with 10 percent held out for stage 8; a Flex page on the website; and a printed card in every outgoing bag. The cost is staff time.
- 2Earned: samples and a one-page fact sheet go to a regional food newsletter and a home-brewing podcast, with a note saying that no coverage is expected and no payment is offered.
- 3Paid social: 5,500 dollars on advertisements shown to coffee-interest audiences and to lapsed subscribers who opted in to marketing, with the stage 2 exclusion list applied.
- 4Creators: two home-brewing creators are each paid 1,000 dollars and sent coffee. The contract requires that they brew it for two weeks before posting, use the platform's paid-partnership label, say "paid partnership with Kestrel Coffee" in the first ten seconds and at the start of the caption, state prices only from the fact sheet, and feel free to say what they dislike.
- 5A sponsored article on a regional food site costs 900 dollars and carries "Sponsored by Kestrel Coffee" above the headline on the listing and on the article page.
- 6Staff are told not to post reviews, and to say they work at Kestrel if they share the launch on personal accounts.
Outcome. A channel register with seven placements, each showing the visible source, the disclosure wording, the cost, and the planned measurement, with 600 dollars held in reserve.
Channel and messenger register
One line per placement. If you cannot fill in the disclosure column, the placement is not ready. Saved in this browser only.
Each owned channel, who on it has agreed to hear from you, and what you will send.
Who you will approach, what you will send, and confirmation that nothing is paid for or conditional.
Each paid channel with cost, audience, exclusions applied, and how its effect will be measured.
Each person or outlet speaking for you, their real experience of the product, and why their audience fits your segment.
Tick every kind of connection that exists anywhere in the plan; each needs a disclosure.
The exact words each messenger will use and where they appear (start of caption, spoken in the first seconds, above the headline).
Tick each term written into creator, publisher, and affiliate agreements.
How reviews are collected, how negative ones are shown, and who is barred from writing them.
Ethics gate: channels and messengers
0/8If any of these is not true: Hold the placement. Add or fix the disclosure, replace the messenger with one who has real experience of the product, or drop the channel. If a partner refuses to disclose, do not work with them; the liability and the breach of trust are both yours.
Common mistakes
- ×Hiding the disclosure among hashtags, at the end of a caption, or behind a "more" link.
- ×Relying on the platform's label alone, when it is small, easy to miss, or absent when the post is reshared.
- ×Scripting enthusiasm for a creator who has not used the product.
- ×Calling free product "gifting" and treating it as if no connection existed.
- ×Forgetting that affiliate links, discount codes, and employee posts are advertising too.
Who is really speaking, and how did this reach me?
Related
References
- Federal Trade Commission (2023). Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 CFR Part 255Endorsements must reflect honest opinion and real use; material connections must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed; advertisers are liable for endorsers' claims.
- Federal Trade Commission (2019). Disclosures 101 for Social Media InfluencersPractical placement and wording of influencer disclosures, including in video.
- Federal Trade Commission (2015). Enforcement Policy Statement on Deceptively Formatted AdvertisementsAdvertising in an editorial format must be identifiable as advertising before the consumer engages with it.
- Federal Trade Commission (2024). Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465Prohibits fake reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, buying reviews conditioned on sentiment, and review suppression.
- Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1)People evaluate a message differently once they recognise it as a persuasion attempt, which is why disclosure matters.
- Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing Management (15th ed.). PearsonPlanning an integrated mix of owned, earned, and paid communication channels.