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U.S. Federal Trade Commission [10] (FTC) chair Deborah Platt Majoras [11] will leave her government post to work for Procter & Gamble [12] (P&G), the largest U.S. consumer products company. Even though Majoras has excused herself from FTC matters that may impact P&G and will need to follow a year-long "cooling off" period, Multinational Monitor's Robert Weissman is concerned. "P&G is the leading company involved in 'buzz [13] marketing,'" he writes. When Commercial Alert [14] petitioned the FTC to investigate buzz marketing as "fundamentally fraudulent and misleading," the watchdog group cited P&G's teen buzz marketing division, "Tremor." Majoras's FTC agreed that the "assumed independence" of a buzz marketer might mislead consumers, but decided against further investigation or action. "The P&G case -- involving a quarter of a million teens who are not instructed to disclose their relationship with the company -- apparently was not noteworthy enough," Weissman concludes. An FTC ethics staffer said of Majoras's new job, "It is how things work. The nature of the business is the revolving door [15]."
Links:
[1] http://dev.prwatch.org/users/6/diane-farsetta
[2] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/activism
[3] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/marketing/word-mouth-marketing
[4] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/third-party-technique
[5] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/children
[6] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/corporations
[7] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/ethics
[8] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/us-government
[9] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdev.prwatch.org%2Fspin%2F2008%2F03%2F7141%2Fgetting-buzzed-through-revolving-door&linkname=Getting%20Buzzed%20Through%20the%20Revolving%20Door
[10] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Federal_Trade_Commission
[11] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Deborah_Platt_Majoras
[12] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Procter_&_Gamble
[13] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/buzz
[14] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Commercial_Alert
[15] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Government-industry_revolving_door
[16] http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog/index.php?/archives/76-How-Things-Work-FTC-Chair-to-Join-Procter-Gamble.html