Brazil: The role of influencers

“Influencer marketing,” the marketing activity of promotion by celebrities and some ordinary people with the power to influence the purchasing decisions of their followers on a variety of social media platforms, is a worldwide phenomenon and is especially relevant in the Brazilian context; where culturally more personal connections are highly valued for creating bonds of trust and, consequently, consumption. Due to this vote of confidence placed by the public, the ethics of influencers’ conduct when promoting commercial services is the subject of so many discussions, with a near consensus on the need for more assertive regulation of this activity.

The degree of “engagement” of influencers with their communities is a direct result of the perceptions of this audience about them, such as admiration for their artistic or a sporting-specific talent, empathy with their life story, or simply liking their personality and/or worldview, among others. Such perceptions generate a feeling of trust in the good faith and veracity of the communicators’ message, especially among the most vulnerable segment of their audience. And from this trust results the influencer’s success in “influencing” someone’s decision to purchase a certain product or service.

The betting market worldwide has sought to consolidate itself as a healthy adult entertainment industry, through the replication of good practices from innovative operators and compliance with government regulations, which in common focus on the protection of minors and on the clear and truthful communication that gambling is fun, must be practised responsibly and does not automatically generate enrichment. However, many influencers’ related to the industry act recklessly, promising unlikely gains, falsely associating the act of playing for fun as a source of wealth, acting without due care to protect underage audiences from such content and, even worse, blatantly promoting illegal operators.

The reasons identified that lead some influencers to such questionable behavior range from lack of knowledge to the deliberate search to maximize the conversion of bettors, and consequently their own profitability. In any scenario, this irresponsible disclosure puts the activity of the entire gaming industry at risk, providing ammunition to the sector’s detractors and fueling an environment of unfair and uneconomic competition to the detriment of legal operators.

In Brazil, as in other jurisdictions, several measures are being studied on how to deal with the challenge of regulating the activity of influencers, led especially by the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation – CONAR, an entity founded 45 years ago that brings together the main communication agents and advertisers in the country, having been included among the regulated operators. The challenge of regulating influencers is not exclusive to the gaming industry and, in 2021, CONAR published the Digital Influencer Advertising Guide Code, which standardizes good practices such as the inclusion of proper identification in communications (#publi, #publicidade) among other distinctions to clearly indicate commercial content, the need to consider the target audience and the form of communication of the message, notably among sectors of sensitive products.

Specifically regarding the betting market, in December 2023, CONAR published a specific Annex on the gambling industry linked to its Code of Ethics (the so-called “Annex X”), the result of intense debate with advertising agents, the Brazilian regulator and operators in the process of authorization, which also incorporated good practices for the sector, largely reflecting the best international experiences and of other critical sectors (e.g. alcohol), which should be observed not only by influencers, but by other media advertising gambling in the country. This regulatory framework was completed with the content of Ordinance 1231/2024 of the Secretary of Prizes and Bets, the Brazilian Betting Regulator, which incorporated in such ordinance several measures and commands brought by Annex X of Conar, and also added other specific provisions, such as special concerns in promoting responsible and healthy gaming.

Since the mere existence of regulatory commands is not enough to ensure the legality of the actions of the entire universe of influencers, other strategies and ideas have been under discussion by the industry with the regulator and within the members of the CONAR’s Betting Working Group, which range from:

• If it should be required that influencers who promote the industry should provide proof of training in responsible gaming advertising, training that would be provided by entities accredited by CONAR, to ensure the integrity of the training • The creation of a registry of influencers before CONAR, with identification and location data to speed up administrative measures for financial accountability, respecting the right of defense • Enforcing the individual accountability of the influencers, through the standardization of back-to-back clauses in their contracts with operators • The accreditation of influencer/affiliate agencies before CONAR, to add a more effective layer of monitoring of influencer activities • The cooperation partnerships with social media entities for the purpose of taking down profiles that advertise illegal operations, specifically due to the absence of a formal legal requirement for action: to be licensed in the country (which is not to be confused with the analysis of content from the perspective of free speech) • The strengthening of technological structures for monitoring networks to speed up the identification of illegal behavior • Strengthening and structuring channels for reporting illegal advertising by civil society, operating agents and their associations, among others

In Brazil, physical casinos were banned in 1946 and, in 2004, bingo halls were formally banned. On both occasions, the main reason was society’s perception that the harmfulness of these activities outweighed the benefits of regulating them. The most important lesson learned from this story is to be very careful about how the industry communicates with society. Influencers currently play a fundamental role in this, so that the wrong actions of a few do not compromise the performance and future of everyone.

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