Compliance

What is Fabricated endorsement?

In one sentence

A fabricated endorsement is a testimonial, review or recommendation from a customer who does not exist or who never said it. It is an advertising-standards violation in most markets, and generating one is not a grey area.

Explanation

The distinction people miss is between dramatisation and fabrication. Using an actor, generated or human, to deliver a real customer's genuine words is a long-established practice that requires disclosure. Inventing the words is a different act entirely and no amount of labelling makes it compliant.

Enforcement in this area has been getting sharper rather than looser, and the availability of tools that make fabrication easy is precisely why. Regulators have signalled that ease of production is not a mitigating factor.

The common mistake

Treating a composite as safe. A testimonial assembled from several real reviews and attributed to one named customer is still a statement nobody made, which is what the rule is about.

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